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Return this book on or before the 
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Satay eh 





Books by “Elizabeth”? 


ADVENTURES OF ELIZABETH IN RUGEN 
APRIL BABY’S BOOK OF TUNES 
CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS 
ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN 
FRAULEIN SCHMIDT AND MR. ANSTRUTHER 
PRINCESS PRISCILLA’S FORTNIGHT 
SOLITARY SUMMER 

THE BENEFACTRESS 

THE CARAVANERS 

THE PASTOR'S WIFE 

VERA 


VERA 


BY THE AUTHOR OF 
‘““HLIZABETH 
AND HER GERMAN GARDEN” 


GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1921 





COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 





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VERA 


I 


‘ N y HEN the doctor had gone, and the two 

women from the village he had been waiting 

for were upstairs shut in with her dead 

father, Lucy went out into the garden and stood lean- 
ing on the gate staring at the sea. 

Her father had died at nine o’clock that morning, 
and it was now twelve. The sun beat on her bare head ; 
and the burnt-up grass along the top of the cliff, and 
the dusty road that passed the gate, and the glittering 
sea, and the few white clouds hanging in the sky, all 
blazed and glared in an extremity of silent, motionless 
heat and light. 

Into this emptiness Lucy stared, motionless herself, 
as if she had been carved in stone. There was not a 
sail on the sea, nor a line of distant smoke from any 
steamer, neither was there once the flash of a bird’s 
wing brushing across the sky. Movement seemed 
smitten rigid. Sound seemed to have gone to sleep. 

Lucy stood staring at the sea, her face as empty of 
expression as the bright blank world before her. Her 
father had been dead three hours, and she felt nothing. 

1 


2 VERA 


It was just a week since they had arrived in Corn- 
wall, she and he, full of hope, full of pleasure in the 
pretty little furnished house they had taken for August 
and September, full of confidence in the good the pure 
air was going to do him. But there had always been 
confidence; there had never been a moment during 
the long years of his fragility when confidence had even 
been questioned. He was delicate, and she had taken 
care of him. She had taken care of him and he had 
_ been delicate ever since she could remember. And ever 
since she could remember he had been everything in 
life to her. She had had no thought since she grew 
up for anybody but her father. There was no room for 
any other thought, so completely did he fill her heart. 
They had done everything together, shared everything 
together, dodged the winters together, settled in charm- 
ing places, seen the same beautiful things, read the 
same books, talked, laughed, had friends,—heaps of 
friends; wherever they were her father seemed at once 
to have friends, adding them to the mass he had already. 
She had not been away from him a day for years; she 
had had no wish to go away. Where and with whom 
could she be so happy as with him? All the years were 
years of sunshine. There had been no winters; nothing 
but summer, summer, and sweet scents and soft skies, 
and patient understanding with her slowness—for he 
had the nimblest mind—and love. He was the most 
amusing companion to her, the most generous friend, 
the most illuminating guide, the most adoring father; 
and now he was dead, and she felt nothing. 


VERA 3 


Her father. Dead. For ever. 

She said the words over to herself. They meant 
nothing. 

She was going to be alone. Without him. Always. 

She said the words over to herself. They meant 
nothing. 

Up in that room with its windows wide open, shut 
away from her with the two village women, he was 
lying dead. He had smiled at her for the last time, said 
all he was ever going to say to her, called her the last 
of the sweet, half-teasing names he loved to invent for 
her. Why, only a few hours ago they were having 
breakfast together and planning what they would do 
that day. Why, only yesterday they drove together 
after tea towards the sunset, and he had seen, with his 
quick eyes that saw everything, some unusual grasses 
by the road side, and had stopped and gathered them, 
excited to find such rare ones, and had taken them back 
with him to study, and had explained them to her 
and made her see profoundly interesting, important 
things in them, in these grasses which, till he touched 
them, had seemed just grasses. That is what he did 
with everything,—touched it into life and delight. The 
grasses lay in the dining-room now, waiting for him to 
work on them, spread out where he had put them on 
some blotting-paper in the window. She had seen them 
as she came through on her way to the garden; and she 
had seen, too, that the breakfast was still there, the 
breakfast they had had together, still as they had left 
it, forgotten by the servants in the surprise of death. 


4, VERA 


He had fallen down as he got up from it. Dead. In 
aninstant. No time for anything, for a cry, for a look. 
Gone. Finished. Wiped out. 

What a beautiful day it was; and so hot! He loved 
heat. They were lucky in the weather. ... 

Yes, there were sounds after all,—she suddenly 
noticed them; sounds from the room upstairs, a busy 
moving about of discreet footsteps, the splash of water, 
crockery being carefully set down. Presently the women 
would come and tell her everything was ready, and she 
could go back to him again. The women had tried to 
comfort her when they arrived; and so had the servants, 
and so had the doctor. Comfort her! And she felt 
nothing. 

Lucy stared at the sea, thinking these things, ex- 
amining the situation as a curious one but unconnected 
with herself, looking at it with a kind of cold compre- 
hension. Her mind was quite clear. Every detail of 
what had happened was sharply before her. She knew 
everything, and she felt nothing,—like God, she said to 
herself; yes, exactly like God. 

Footsteps came along the road, which was hidden by 
the garden’s fringe of trees and bushes for fifty yards 
on either side of the gate, and presently a man passed 
between her eyes and the sea. She did not notice him, 
for she was noticing nothing but her thoughts, and he 
passed in front of her quite close, and was gone. 

But he had seen her, and had stared hard at her for 
- the brief instant it took to pass the gate. Her face and 
its expression had surprised him. He was not a very 


VERA 5 


observant man, and at that moment was even less so 
than usual, for he was particularly and deeply absorbed 
in his own affairs; yet when he came suddenly on the 
motionless figure at the gate, with its wide-open eyes 
that simply looked through him as he went by, uncon- 
scious, obviously, that any one was going by, his atten- 
tion was surprised away from himself and almost he 
had stopped to examine the strange creature more 
closely. His code, however, prevented that, and he 
continued along the further fifty yards of bushes and 
trees that hid the other half of the garden from the 
road, but more slowly, slower and slower, till at the 
end of the garden where the road left it behind and 
went on very solitarily over the bare grass on the top 
of the cliffs, winding in and out with the ins and 
outs of the coast for as far as one could see, he hesi- 
tated, looked back, went on a yard or two, hesitated 
again, stopped and took off his hot hat and wiped 
his forehead, looked at the bare country and the long 
twisting glare of the road ahead, and then very slowly 
turned and went past the belt of bushes towards the 
gate again. 

He said to himself as he went: “My God, I’m so 
lonely. I can’t stand it. I must speak to some one. 
I shall go off my head 2 

For what had happened to this man—his name was 
Wemyss—was that public opinion was forcing him into 
retirement and inactivity at the very time when he most 
needed company and distraction. He had to go away 
by himself, he had to withdraw for at the very least a 





6 VERA 


week from his ordinary life, from his house on the river 
where he had just begun his summer holiday, from his 
house in London where at least there were his clubs, 
because of this determination on the part of public 
opinion that he should for a space be alone with his 
sorrow. Alone with sorrow,—of all ghastly things for 
aman to be alone with! It was an outrage, he felt, to 
condemn a man to that; it was the cruellest form of 
solitary confinement. He had to come to Cornwall because 
it took a long time to get to, a whole day in the train 
there and a whole day in the train back, clipping the 
week, the minimum of time public opinion insisted on 
for respecting his bereavement, at both ends; but 
still that left five days of awful loneliness, of wandering 
about the cliffs by himself trying not to think, without 
a soul to speak to, without a thing to do. He couldn’t 
play bridge because of public opinion. Everybody knew 
what had happened to him. It had been in all the 
papers. ‘The moment he said his name they would 
know. It was so recent. Only last week. ... 

No, he couldn’t bear this, he must speak to some 
one. That girl,—with those strange eyes she wasn’t 
just ordinary. She wouldn’t mind letting him talk 
to her for a little, perhaps sit in the garden with 
her a little. She would understand. 

Wemyss was like a child in his misery. He very 
nearly cried outright when he got to the gate and took 
off his hat, and the girl looked at him blankly just as 
if she still didn’t see him and hadn’t heard him when 


VERA 7 


he said, “Could you let me have a glass of water? 
I—it’s so hot 41 

He began to stammer because of her eyes. “I—I’m 
horribly thirsty—the heat i 

He pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his 
forehead. He. certainly looked very hot. His face was 
red and distressed, and his forehead dripped. He was 
all puckered, like an unhappy baby. And the girl 
looked so cool, so bloodlessly cool. Her hands, folded 
on the top bar of the gate, looked more than cool, they 
looked cold; like hands in winter, shrunk and small 
with cold. She had bobbed hair, he noticed, so that it 
was impossible to tell how old she was, brown hair 
from which the sun was beating out bright lights; and 
her small face had no colour except those wide eyes 
fixed on his and the colour of her rather big mouth; 
but even her mouth seemed frozen. 

‘Would it be much bother ** began Wemyss 
again; and then his situation overwhelmed him. 











‘You would be doing a greater kindness than you 
know,” he said, his voice trembling with unhappiness, 
“if you would let me come into the garden a minute 
and rest.” 

At the sound of the genuine wretchedness in his voice 
Lucy’s blank eyes became a little human. It got 
through to her consciousness that this distressed warm 
stranger was appealing to her for something. 

“Are you so hot?” she asked, really seeing him for 
the first time. 


8 VERA 


“Yes, I’m hot,” said Wemyss. “But it isn’t that. 
I’ve had a misfortune—a terrible misfortune——” 

He paused, overcome by the remembrance of it, by 
the unfairness of so much horror having overtaken 
him. 

‘““Oh, I’m sorry,” said Lucy vaguely, still miles away 
from him, deep in indifference. “Have you lost any- 
thing?” 

“Good God, not that sort of misfortune!” cried 
Wemyss. “Let me come in a minute—into the garden 
a minute—just to sit a minute with a human being. 
You would be doing a great kindness. Because you’re 
a stranger I can talk to you about it if you'll let me. 
Just because we’re strangers I could talk. I haven’t 
spoken to a soul but servants and official people since 
—since it happened. For two days I haven’t spoken 


bP 





at all to a living soul—I shall go mad 

His voice shook again with his unhappiness, with 
his astonishment at his unhappiness. 

Lucy didn’t think two days very long not to speak 
to anybody in, but there was something overwhelming 
about the strange man’s evident affliction that roused 
her out of her apathy; not much,—she was still pro- 
foundly detached, observing from another world, as it 
were, this extreme heat and agitation, but at least she 
saw him now, she did with a faint curiosity consider 
him. He was like some elemental force in his direct- 
ness. He had the quality of an irresistible natural 
phenomenon. But she did not move from her position 


VERA 9 


at the gate, and her eyes continued, with the unwaver- 
ingness he thought so odd, to stare into his. 

“IT would gladly have let you come in,” she said, “‘if 
you had come yesterday, but to-day my father died.” 

Wemyss looked at her in astonishment. She had 
said it in as level and ordinary a voice as if she had been 
remarking, rather indifferently, on the weather. 

Then he had a moment of insight. His own calamity 
had illuminated him. He who had never known pain, 
who had never let himself be worried, who had never 
let himself be approached in his life by a doubt, had for 
the last week lived in an atmosphere of worry and pain, 
and of what, if he allowed himself to think, to become 
morbid, might well grow into a most unfair, tormenting 
doubt. He understood, as he would not have under- 
stood a week ago, what her whole attitude, her rigidity 
meant. He stared at her a moment while she stared 
straight back at him, and then his big warm hands 
dropped on to the cold ones folded on the top bar of the 
gate, and he said, holding them firmly though they made 
no attempt to move, “So that’s it. So that’s why. 
Now I know.” 

And then he added, with the simplicity his own 
situation was putting into everything he did, “That 
settles it. We two stricken ones must talk together.” 

And still covering her hands with one of his, with the 
other he unlatched the gate and walked in, 


II 


i: was a seat under a mulberry tree on 
the little lawn, with its back to the house and 
the gaping windows, and Wemyss, spying it 

out, led Lucy to it as if she were a child, holding her 

by the hand. | 

She went with him indifferently. What did it matter 
whether she sat under the mulberry tree or stood at 
the gate? This convulsed stranger—was he real? Was 
anything real? Let him tell her whatever it was he 
wanted to tell her, and she would listen, and get him 
his glass of water, and then he would go his way and 
by that time the women would have finished upstairs 
and she could be with her father again. 

“T’ll fetch the water,” she said when they got to the 
seat. 

“No, Sit down,” said Wemyss. 

She sat down. So did he, letting her hand go. It 
dropped on the seat, palm upwards, between them. 

“It’s strange our coming across each other like this,” 
he said, looking at her while she looked indifferently 
straight in front of her at the sun on the grass beyond 
the shade of the mulberry tree, at a mass of huge 
fuchsia bushes a little way off. “I’ve been going 
through hell—and so must you have been. Good God, 

10 


VERA 11 
what hell! Do you mind if I tell you? You'll under- 


stand because of your own ay 

Lucy didn’t mind. She didn’t mind anything. She 
merely vaguely wondered that he should think she had 
been going through hell. Hell and her darling father; 





how quaint it sounded. She began to suspect that she 
was asleep. All this wasn’t really happening. Her 
father wasn’t dead. Presently the housemaid would 
come in with the hot water and wake her to the usual 
cheerful day. The man sitting beside her,=he seemed 
rather vivid for a dream, it was true; so detailed, with 
his flushed face and the perspiration on his forehead, 
besides the feel of his big warm hand a moment ago and 
the small puffs of heat that came from his clothes when 
he moved. But it was so unlikely ... everything 
that had happened since breakfast was so umlikely. 
This man, too, would resolve himself soon into just 
something she had had for dinner last night, and she 
would tell her father about her dream at breakfast, 
and they would laugh. 

She stirred uneasily. It wasn’t adream. It was real. 

“The story is unbelievably horrible,’ Wemyss was 
saying in a high aggrievement, looking at her little 
head with the straight cut hair, and her grave profile. 
How old was she? Eighteen? Twenty-eight? Impos- 
sible to tell exactly with hair cut like that, but young 
anyhow compared to him; very young perhaps com- 
pared to him who was well over forty, and so much 
scarred, so deeply scarred, by this terrible thing that 
had happened to him. 


12 VERA 


“It’s so horrible that I wouldn’t talk about it if you 
were going to mind,” he went on, “but you can’t mind 
because you’re a stranger, and it may help you with 
your own trouble, because whatever you may suffer 
I’m suffering much worse, so then you'll see yours isn’t 
so bad. And besides I must talk to some one—I should 
go mad iH 

This was certainly a dream, thought Lucy. Things 
didn’t happen like this when one was awake,— grotesque 





things. 

She turned her head and looked at him. No, it 
wasn’t a dream. No dream could be so solid as the 
man beside her. What was he saying? 

He was saying in a tormented voice that he was 
Wemyss. 

“You are Wemyss,” she repeated gravely, 

It made no impression on her. She didn’t mind his 
being Wemyss. 

“I’m the Wemyss the newspapers were full of last 
week,” he said, seeing that the name left her un- 
moved. ‘My God,” he went on, again wiping his fore- ~ 
head, but as fast as he wiped it more beads burst 
out, ‘‘those posters—to see one’s own name staring 
at one everywhere on posters!” 

““Why was your name on posters?” said Lucy. 

She didn’t want to know; she asked mechanically, 
her ear attentive only to the sounds from the open 
windows of the room upstairs. 

“Don’t you read newspapers here?” was his answer. 

“T don’t think we do,” she said, listening. ‘‘We’ve 


VERA 13 


been settling in. I don’t think we’ve remembered to 
order any newspapers yet.” 

A look of some, at any rate, relief from the pressure 
he was evidently struggling under came into Wemyss’s 
face. “Then I can tell you the real version,” he said, 
“without your being already filled up with the mon- 
strous suggestions that were made at the inquest. 
As though I hadn’t suffered enough as it was! As 
though it hadn’t been terrible enough alread i 

“The inquest?” repeated Lucy. 

Again she turned her head and looked at him. ‘Has 
your trouble anything to do with—death?” 

“Why, you don’t suppose anything else would reduce 
me to the state I’m in?” 

“Oh, I’m sorry,’’ she said; and into her eyes and into 
her voice came a different expression, something living, 
something gentle. ‘I hope it wasn’t anybody you— 
loved ?”” 

“It was my wife,” said Wemyss. 

He got up quickly, so near was he to crying at the 
thought of it, at the thought of all he had endured, 
and turned his back on her and began stripping the 
leaves off the branches above his head. 

Lucy watched him, leaning forward a little on both 
hands. “Tell me about it,’ she said presently, very 
gently. 

He came back and dropped down heavily beside her 
again, and with many interjections of astonishment 
that such a ghastly calamity could have happened to 
him, to him who till now had never 








14 VERA 
“Yes,” said Lucy, comprehendingly and gravely, 


33 





‘“‘yes—I know 

—had never had anything to do with—well, with 
calamities, he told her the story. 

They had gone down, he and his wife, as they did 
every 25th of July, for the summer to their house on 
the river, and he had been looking forward to a glorious 
time of peaceful doing nothing after months of London, 
just lying about in a punt and reading and smoking and 
resting—London was an awful place for tiring one out 
—and they hadn’t been there twenty-four hours before 
his wife—before his wife—— 

The remembrance of it was too grievous to him. He 
couldn’t go on. 

“Was she—very ill?” asked Lucy gently, to give 
him time to recover. “I think that would almost be 
better. One would be a little—at least one would be 
a little prepared i 

“She wasn’t ill at all,” cried Wemyss. ‘“‘She just— 
died.”” 

“Oh—like father!” exclaimed Lucy, roused now 
altogether. It was she now who laid her hand on his. 

Wemyss seized it between both his, and went on 





quickly. 

He was writing letters, he said, in the library at his 
table in the window where he could see the terrace and 
the garden and the river; they had had tea together 
only an hour before; there was a flagged terrace along 
that side of the house, the side the library was on and 
all the principal rooms; and all of a sudden there was 


VERA 15 


a great flash of shadow between him and the light; 
come and gone instantaneously; and instantaneously 
then there was a thud; he would never forget it, that 
thud; and there outside his window on the flags 

“Oh, don’t—oh, don’t ? gasped Lucy. 

“It was my wife,” Wemyss hurried on, not able now 
to stop, looking at Lucy while he talked with eyes of 
amazed horror. “Fallen out of the top room of the 
house—her sitting-room because of the view—it was in 
a straight line with the library window—she dropped 


past my window like a stone—she was smashed— 
33 











smashed. 

“Oh, don’t—oh 2 

‘‘Now can you wonder at the state I’m in?” he cried. 
“Can you wonder if I’m nearly off my head? And 
forced to be by myself—forced into retirement for what 
the world considers a proper period of mourning, with 
nothing to think of but that ghastly inquest.” 

He hurt her hand, he gripped it so hard. 

“If you hadn’t let me come and talk to you,” 
he said, “I believe ’'d have pitched myself over the 
cliff there this afternoon and made an end of it.” 

“But how—but why—how could she fall?” whispered 
Lucy, to whom poor Wemyss’s misfortune seemed more 
frightful than anything she had ever heard of. 

She hung on his words, her eyes on his face, her lips 
parted, her whole body an agony of sympathy. Life— 
how terrible it was, and how unsuspected! One went 
on and on, never dreaming of the sudden dreadful day 
when the coverings were going to be dropped and one 





16 VERA 


would see it was death after all, that it had been death 
all the time, death pretending, death waiting. Her 
father, so full of love and interests and plans,—gone, 
finished, brushed away as if he no more mattered than 
some insect one unseeingly treads on as one walks; 
and this man’s wife—dead in an instant, dead so far 
more cruelly, so horribly... . 

“TY had often told her to be careful of that win- 
dow,”” Wemyss answered in a voice that almost sounded 
like anger; but all the time his tone had been one of 
high anger at the wanton, outrageous cruelty of fate. 
“It was a very low one, and the floor was slippery. 
Oak. Every floor in my house is polished oak. I had 
them put in myself. She must have been leaning out 
and her feet slipped away behind her. That would make 
her fall head foremost a 

“Oh—oh ”? said Lucy, shrinking. What could 
she do, what could she say to help him, to soften at 
least these dreadful memories? 

“And then,” Wemyss went on after a moment, as 
unaware as Lucy was that she was tremblingly stroking 
his hand, “at the inquest, as though it hadn’t all been 
awful enough for me already, the jury must actually 
get wrangling about the cause of death.” 

“The cause of death?’ echoed Lucy. ‘“But—she 
fell.” 

“Whether it were an accident or done on purpose.” 

“Done on Ff 

‘*Suicide.” 


“Oh. 99 














VERA 1% 


She drew in her breath quickly. 

“But—it wasn’t?” 

“How could it be? She was my wife, without a 
care in the world, everything done for her, no troubles, 
nothing on her mind, nothing wrong with her health. 
We had been married fifteen years, and I was devoted 
to her—devoted to her.” 

He banged his knee with his free hand. His voice 
was full of indignant tears. 

“Then why did the jury: 4 

“My wife had a fool of a maid—TI never could stand 
that woman—and it was something she said at the 
inquest, some invention or other about what my wife 
had said to her. You know what servants are. It 
upset some of the jury. You know juries are made up 
of anybody and everybody—butcher, baker, and candle- 
stick-maker—quite uneducated most of them, quite at 
the mercy of any suggestion. And so instead of a 
verdict of death by misadventure, which would have 
been the right one, it was an open verdict.” 

“Oh, how terrible—how terrible for you,” breathed 
Lucy, her eyes on his, her mouth twitching with 
sympathy. 

“You'd have seen all about it if you had read the 
papers last week,” said Wemyss, more quietly. It had 
done him good to get it out and talked over. 

He looked down at her upturned face with its horror- 
stricken eyes and twitching mouth. ‘Now tell me about 
yourself,” he said, touched with compunction; nothing 
that had happened to her could be so horrible as what 





18 VERA 


had happened to him, still she too was newly smitten, 
they had met on a common ground of disaster, Death 
himself had been their introducer. 

“Ts life all—only death?” she breathed, her horror- 
stricken eyes on his. 

Before he could answer—and what was there to 
answer to such a question except that of course it- 
wasn’t, and he and she were just victims of a monstrous 
special unfairness?—he certainly was; her father had 
probably died as fathers did, in the usual way in his bed 
—before he could answer, the two women came out of 
the house, and with small discreet steps proceeded 
down the path to the gate. The sun flooded their 
spare figures and their decent black clothes, clothes 
kept for these occasions as a mark of respectful 
sympathy. 

One of them saw Lucy under the mulberry tree and 
hesitated, and then came across the grass to her with 
the mincing steps of tact. 

‘“Here’s somebody coming to speak to you,” said 
Wemyss, for Lucy was sitting with her back to the 
path. 

She started and looked round. 

The woman approached hesitatingly, her head on 
one side, her hands folded, her face pulled into a little 
smile intended to convey encouragement and pity. 

“The gentleman’s quite ready, miss,” she said softly. 


Iil 


LL that day and all the next day Wemyss was 
A Lucy’s tower of strength and rock of refuge. 

He did everything that had to be done of the 
business part of death—that extra wantonness of 
misery thrown in so grimly to finish off the crushing of 
a mourner who is alone. It is true the doctor was 
kind and ready to help, but he was a complete 
stranger; she had never seen him till he was fetched 
that dreadful morning; and he had other things to see 
to besides her affairs,—his own patients, scattered 
widely over a lonely countryside. Wemyss had noth- 
ing to see to. He could concentrate entirely on Lucy. 
And he was her friend, linked to her so strangely and 
so strongly by death. She felt she had known him 
for ever. She felt that since the beginning of time 
she and he had been advancing hand in hand towards 
just this place, towards just this house and garden, 
towards just this year, this August, this moment 
of existence. 

Wemyss dropped quite naturally into the place a 
near male relative would have been in if there had 
been a near male relative within reach; and his relief 
at having something to do, something practical and 
immediate, was so immense that never were funeral 

19 


20 VERA 


arrangements made with greater zeal and energy,— 
really one might almost say with greater gusto. Fresh 
from the horrors of those other funeral arrangements, 
clouded as they had been by the silences of friends 
and the averted looks of neighbours—all owing to the 
idiotic jurors and their hesitations, and the vindictive- 
ness of that woman because, he concluded, he had re- 
fused to raise her wages the previous month—what he 
was arranging now was so simple and straightforward 
that it positively was a pleasure. There were no 
anxieties, there were no worries, and there was a 
grateful little girl. After each fruitful visit to the 
undertaker, and he paid several in his zeal, he came 
back to Lucy and she was grateful; and she was not 
only grateful, but very obviously glad to get him back. 

He saw she didn’t like it when he went away, off along 
the top of the cliff on his various business visits, purpose 
in each step, a different being from the indignantly 
miserable person who had dragged about that very 
cliff killing time such a little while before; he could see 
she didn’t like it. She knew he had to go, she was 
grateful and immensely expressive of her gratitude— 
Wemyss thought he had never met any one so ex- 
pressively grateful—that he should so diligently go, but 
she didn’t like it. He saw she didn’t like it; he saw 
that she clung to him; and it pleased him. 

“Don’t be long,’? she murmured each time, looking 
at him with eyes of entreaty; and when he got back, 
and stood before her again mopping his forehead, hav- 
ing triumphantly advanced the funeral arrangements 


VERA 21 


another stage, a faint colour came into her face and 
she had the relieved eyes of a child who has been 
left alone in the dark and sees its mother coming in 
with a candle. Vera usedn’t to look like that. Vera 
had accepted everything he did for her as a matter of 
course. 

Naturally he wasn’t going to let the poor little girl 
sleep alone in that house with a dead body, and the 
strange servants who had been hired together with the 
house and knew nothing either about her or her father 
probably getting restive as night drew on, and as likely 
as not bolting to the village; so he fetched his things 
from the primitive hotel down in the cove about seven 
o’clock and announced his intention of sleeping on the 
drawing-room sofa. He had lunched with her, and had 
had tea with her, and now was going to dine with her. 
What she would have done without him Wemyss couldn’t 
think. 

He felt he was being delicate and tactful in this 
about the drawing-room sofa. He might fairly have 
claimed the spare-room bed; but he wasn’t going to 
take any advantage, not the smallest, of the poor little 
girl’s situation. The servants, who supposed him to be 
a relation and had supposed him to be that from the 
first moment they saw him, big and middle-aged, hold- 
ing the young lady’s hand under the mulberry tree, 
were surprised at having to make up a bed in the 
drawing-room when there were two spare-rooms with 
beds already in them upstairs, but did so obediently, 
vaguely imagining: it had something to do with watchful- 


22 VERA 


ness and French windows; and Lucy, when he told her 
he was going to stay the night, was so grateful, so 
really thankful, that her eyes, red from the waves 
of grief that had engulfed her at intervals during the 
afternoon—ever since, that is, the sight of her dead 
father lying so remote from her, so wrapped, it seemed, 
in a deep, absorbed attentiveness, had unfrozen her 
and swept her away into a sea of passionate weeping— 
filled again with tears, 

“Oh,” she murmured, “how good you are——” 

It was Wemyss who had done all the thinking for 
her, and in the spare moments between his visits to 
the undertaker about the arrangements, and to the 
doctor about the certificate, and to the vicar about the 
burial, had telegraphed to her only existing relative, 
an aunt, had sent the obituary notice to The Times, 
and had even reminded her that she had on a blue 
frock and asked if she hadn’t better put on a black 
one; and now this last instance of his thoughtfulness 
overwhelmed her. 

She had been dreading the night, hardly daring to 
think of it so much did she dread it; and each time he 
had gone away on his errands, through her heart crept 
the thought of what it would be like when dusk came 
and he went away for the last time and she would be 
alone, all alone in the silent house, and upstairs that 
strange, wonderful, absorbed thing that used to be her 
father, and whatever happened to her, whatever awful 
horror overcame her in the night, whatever danger, he 


VERA 23 


wouldn’t hear, he wouldn’t know, he would still lie there 
content, content... . 

“How good you are!’ she said to Wemyss, her red 
eyes filling. ‘What would I have done without you?” 

“But what would I have done without you?’ he 
answered; and they stared at each other, astonished 
at the nature of the bond between them, at its closeness, 
at the way it seemed almost miraculously to have been 
arranged that they should meet on the crest of despair 
and save each other. 

Till long after the stars were out they sat together 
on the edge of the cliff, Wemyss smoking while he talked, 
in a voice subdued by the night and the silence and the 
occasion, of his life and of the regular healthy calm 
with which it had proceeded till a week ago. Why this 
calm should have been interrupted, and so cruelly, he 
couldn’t imagine. It wasn’t as if he had deserved it. 
He didn’t know that a man could ever be justified 
in saying that he had done good, but he, Wemyss, could 
at least fairly say that he hadn’t done any one any 
harm. 

“Oh, but you have done good,” said Lucy, her voice, 
too, dropped into more than ordinary gentleness by the 
night, the silence, and the occasion; besides which it 
vibrated with feeling, it was lovely with seriousness, 
with simple conviction. “Always, always I know that 
you’ve been doing good,” she said, “being kind. I can’t 
imagine you anything else but a help to people and 
a comfort.” 


And Wemyss said, Well, he had done his best and 


24 VERA 


tried, and no man could say more, but judging from 
what—well, what people had said to him, it hadn’t 
been much of a success sometimes, and often and often 
he had been hurt, deeply hurt, by being misunderstood. 

And Lucy said, How was it possible to misunderstand 
him, to misunderstand any one so transparently good, 
so evidently kind? 

And Wemyss said, Yes, one would think he was 
easy enough to understand; he was a very natural, 
simple sort of person, who had only all his life asked 
for peace and quiet. It wasn’t much to ask. Vera 

“Who is Vera?” asked Lucy. 

“My wife.” 

“Ah, don’t,” said Lucy earnestly, taking his hand 
very gently in hers. “Don’t talk of that to-night— 
please don’t let yourself think of it. If I could only, 
only find the words that would comfort you of 

And Wemyss said that she didn’t need words, that 
just her being there, being with him, letting him help 
her, and her not having been mixed up with anything 
before in his life, was enough. 

‘“Aren’t we like two children,” he said, his voice, like 
hers, deepened by feeling, “two scared, unhappy chil- 
dren, clinging to each other alone in the dark?” 

So they talked on in subdued voices as people do 








who are in some holy place, sitting close together, look- 
ing out at the starlit sea, darkness and coolness gather- 
ing round them, and the grass smelling sweetly after 
the hot day, and the little waves, such a long way down, 
lapping lazily along the shingle, till Wemyss said it 


VERA 25 


must be long past bedtime, and she, poor girl, must 
badly need rest. 

“How old are you?” he asked suddenly, turning to 
her and scrutinising the delicate faint outline of her 
face against the night. 

“Twenty-two,” said Lucy. 

“You might just as easily be twelve,’ he said, 
“except for the sorts of things you say.” 

“It’s my hair,” said Lucy. “My father liked—he 
liked 

“Don’t,” said Wemyss, in his turn taking her hand. 
“Don’t cry again. Don’t cry any more to-night. Come 
—we'll goin. It’s time you were in bed.” 

And he helped her up, and when they got into the 
light of the hall he saw that she had, this tials success- 
fully strangled her tears. 

*“Good-night,” she said, when he had lit her candle 
for her, “‘good-night, and—God bless you.” 

“God bless you,” said Wemyss solemnly, holding her 
hand in his great warm grip. 

“He has,” said Lucy. “Indeed He has already, in 
sending me you.” And she smiled up at him. 

For the first time since he had known her—and he 
too had the feeling that he had known her ever since he 
could remember—he saw her smile, and the difference 
it made to her marred, stained face surprised him. 

“Do that again,” he said, staring at her, still holding 
her hand. 

“Do what?” asked Lucy. 

“Smile,” said Wemyss. 





26 VERA 


Then she laughed; but the sound of it in the silent, 
brooding house was shocking. 

“Oh,”’ she gasped, stopping short, hanging her head 
appalled by what it had sounded like. 

“Remember you’re to go to sleep and not think of 
anything,” Wemyss ordered as she went slowly upstairs. 

And she did fall asleep at once, exhausted but pro- 
tected, like some desolate baby that had cried itself 
sick and now had found its mother. 


EV; 


LL this, however, came to an end next day 
a when towards evening Miss Entwhistle, Lucy’s 
aunt, arrived, 

Wemyss retired to his hotel again and did not 
reappear till next morning, giving Lucy time to explain 
him; but either the aunt was inattentive, as she well 
might be under the circumstances in which she found 
herself so suddenly, so lamentably placed, or Lucy’s 
explanations were vague, for Miss Entwhistle took 
Wemyss for a friend of her dear Jim’s, one of her dear, 
dear brother’s many friends, and accepted his services 
as natural and himself with emotion, warmth, and 
reminiscences. 

Wemyss immediately became her rock as well as 
Lucy’s, and she in her turn clung to him. Where he 
had been clung to by one he was now clung to by two, 
which put an end to talk alone with Lucy. He did not 
see Lucy alone again once before the funeral, but at 
least, owing to Miss Entwhistle’s inability to do without 
him, he didn’t have to spend any more solitary hours. 
Except breakfast, he had all his meals up in the little 
house on the cliff, and in the evenings smoked his pipe 
under the mulberry tree till bedtime sent him away, 
while Miss Entwhistle in the darkness gently and sol- 

27 


28 VERA 


emnly reminisced, and Lucy sat silent, as close to him 
as she could get. 

The funeral was hurried on by the doctor’s advice, 
but even so the short notice and the long distance did 
not prevent James Entwhistle’s friends from coming to 
it. The small church down in the cove was packed; 
the small hotel bulged with concerned, grave-faced 
people. Wemyss, who had done everything and been 
everything, disappeared in this crowd. Nobody noticed 
him. None of James Entwhistle’s friends happened— 
luckily, he felt, with last week’s newspapers still fresh 
in the public mind—to be his. For twenty-four hours 
he was swept entirely away from Lucy by this surge of 
mourners, and at the service in the church could only 
catch a distant glimpse, from his seat by the door, of 
her bowed head in the front pew. 

He felt very lonely again. He wouldn’t have stayed 
in the church a minute, for he objected with a healthy 
impatience to the ceremonies of death, if it hadn’t been 
that he regarded himself as the stage-manager, so 
to speak, of these particular ceremonies, and that it 
was in a peculiarly intimate sense his funeral. He 
took a pride in it. Considering the shortness of the 
time it really was a remarkable achievement, the way 
he had done it, the smooth way the whole thing was 
going, But to-morrow,—what would happen to-mor- 
row, when all these people had gone away again? 
Would they take Lucy and the aunt with them? Would 
the house up there be shut, and he, Wemyss, left alone 
again with his bitter, miserable recollections? He 


VERA 29 


wouldn’t, of course, stay on in that place if Lucy were 
to go, but wherever he went there would be emptiness 
without her, without her gratefulness, and gentleness, 
and clinging. Comforting and being comforted,—that 
is what he and she had been doing to each other for 
four days, and he couldn’t but believe she would feel 
the same emptiness without him that he knew he was 
going to feel without her. 

In the dark under the mulberry tree, while her aunt 
talked softly and sadly of the past, Wemyss had some- 
times laid his hand on Lucy’s, and she had never taken 
hers away. They had sat there, content and comforted 
to be hand in hand. She had the trust in him, he felt, 
of a child; the confidence, and the knowledge that she 
was safe. He was proud and touched to know it, and 
it warmed him through and through to see how her 
face lit up whenever he appeared. Vera’s face hadn’t 
done that. Vera had never understood him, not with 
fifteen years to do it in, as this girl had in half a day. 
And the way Vera had died,—it was no use mincing 
matters when it came to one’s own thoughts, and it had 
been all of a piece with her life: the disregard for 
others and of anything said to her for her own good, 
the determination to do what suited her, to lean out of 
dangerous windows if she wished to, for instance, not to 
take the least trouble, the least thought. . . . Imagine 
_ bringing such horror on him, such unforgettable horror, 
besides worries and unhappiness without end, by de- 
liberately disregarding his warnings, his orders in- 
deed, about that window. Wemyss did feel that if 


30 VERA 


one looked at the thing dispassionately it would be 
difficult to find indifference to the wishes and feelings 
of others going further. 

Sitting in the church during the funeral service, 
his arms folded on his chest and his mouth grim with 
these thoughts, he suddenly caught sight of Lucy’s 
face. The priest was coming down the aisle in front of 
the coffin on the way out to the grave, and Lucy and 
her aunt were following first behind it, 

Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to 
live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut 
down, like a flower; he fleeth as tt were a shadow, and 
never contimueth m one stay... . 

The priest’s sad, disillusioned voice recited the 
beautiful words as he walked, the afternoon sun from 
the west window and the open west door pouring on 
his face and on the faces of the procession that seemed 
all black and white,—black clothes, white faces. 

The whitest face was Lucy’s, and when Wemyss 
saw the look on it his mouth relaxed and his heart went 
soft within him, and he came impulsively out of the 
shadow and joined her, boldly walking on her other side 
at the head of the procession, and standing beside her at 
the grave; and at the awful moment when the first earth 
was dropped on to the coffin he drew her hand, before 
everybody, through his arm and held it there tight. 

Nobody was surprised at his standing there with 
her like that. It was taken quite for granted. He was 
evidently a relation of poor Jim’s. Nor was anybody 
surprised when Wemyss, not letting her go again, took 


VERA 31 


her home up the cliff, her arm in his just as though he 
were the chief mourner, the aunt following with some 
one else. 

He didn’t speak to her or disturb her with any claims 
on her attention, partly because the path was very 
steep and he wasn’t used to cliffs, but also because of 
his feeling that he and she, isolated together by their 
sorrows, understood without any words. And when they 
reached the house, the first to reach it from the church 
just as if, he couldn’t help thinking, they were coming 
back from their wedding, he told her in his firmest voice 
to go straight up to her room and lie down, and she 
obeyed with the sweet obedience of perfect trust. 

“Who is that?’ asked the man who was helping 
Miss Entwhistle up the cliff, 

“Oh, a very old friend of darling Jim’s,”’ she sobbed, 
—she had been sobbing without stopping from the first 
words of the burial service, and was quite unable to 
leave off. “Mr.—Mr.—We—We—Wenmyss 4 

“Wemyss? I don’t remember coming across him 
with Jim.” 

“Oh, one of his—his oldest—f—fr—triends,” sobbed 
poor Miss Entwhistle, got completely out of control. 

Wemyss, continuing in his réle of chief mourner, was 
the only person who was asked to spend the evening 
up at the bereaved house. 

“T don’t wonder,” said Miss Entwhistle to him at 
dinner, still with tears in her voice, “at my dear 
brother’s devotion to you. You have been the greatest 
help, the greatest comfort sit 








32 VERA 


And neither Wemyss nor Lucy felt equal to ex- 
planation. | 

What did it matter? Lucy, fatigued by emotions, 
her mind bruised by the violent demands that had 
been made on it the last four days, sat drooping at 
the table, and merely thought that if her father had 
known Wemyss it would certainly have been true that 
he was devoted to him. He hadn’t known him; he 
had missed him by—yes, by just three hours; and this 
wonderful friend of hers was the very first good thing 
that she and her father hadn’t shared. And Wemyss’s 
attitude was simply that if people insist on jumping at 
conclusions, why, let them. He couldn’t anyhow begin 
to expound himself in the middle of a meal, with a 
parlourmaid handing dishes round and listening. 

But there was an awkward little moment when Miss 
Entwhistle tearfully wondered—she was eating blanc- 
mange, the last of a series of cold and pallid dishes with 
which the imaginative cook, a woman of Celtic origin, 
had expressed her respectful appreciation of the occa- 
sion—whether when the will was read it wouldn’t be 
found that Jim had appointed Mr. Wemyss poor Lucy’s 
guardian. 

“TI am—dear me, how very hard it is to remember 
to say I was—my dear brother’s only relative. We 
belong—belonged to an exiguous family, and naturally 
I’m no longer as young as I was. There is only—was 
only—a year between Jim and me, and at any moment 
I may be——” 


VERA 33 


Here Miss Entwhistle was interrupted by a sob, and 
had to put down her spoon. 

*‘_taken,” she finished after a moment, during which 
the other two sat silent. 

“When this happens,” she went on presently, a little 
recovered, “poor Lucy will be without any one, unless 
Jim thought of this and has appointed a guardian. 
You, Mr. Weymss, I hope and expect.” 

Neither Lucy nor Wemyss spoke. ‘There was the 
parlourmaid hovering, and one couldn’t anyhow go 
into explanations now which ought to have been made 
four days ago. 

A dead-white cheese was handed round,—something 
local probably, for it wasn’t any form of cheese with 
which Wemyss was acquainted, and the meal ended 
with cups of intensely black cold coffee. And all these 
carefully thought-out expressions of the cook’s sym- 
pathy were lost on the three, who noticed nothing; 
certainly they noticed nothing in the way the cook had 
intended. Wemyss was privately a little put out by the 
coffee being cold. He had eaten all the other clammy 
things patiently, but a man likes his after-dinner coffee 
hot, and it was new in his experience to have it served 
cold. He did notice this, and was surprised that neither 
of his companions appeared to. But there,—women 
were notoriously insensitive to food; on this point the 
best of them were unintelligent, and the worst of them 
were impossible. Vera had been awful about it; he had 
had to do all the ordering of the meals himself at last, 
and also the engaging of the cooks. 


34 VERA 


He got up from the table to open the door for the 
ladies feeling inwardly chilled, feeling, as he put it to 
himself, slabby inside; and, left alone with a dish of 
black plums and some sinister-looking wine in a de- 
canter, which he avoided because when he took hold of 
it ice clinked, he rang the bell as unobtrusively as he 
could and asked the parlourmaid in a subdued voice, the 
French window to the garden being open and in the 
garden being Lucy and her aunt, whether there were 
such a thing in the house as a whisky and soda. 

The parlourmaid, who was a nice-looking girl and 
much more at home, as she herself was the first to admit, 
with gentlemen than with ladies, brought it him, and 
inquired how he had liked the dinner. 

“Not at all,’ said Wemyss, whose mind on that point 
was clear. 

“No sir,” said the parlourmaid, nodding sympa- 
thetically. ‘No sir.” 

She then explained in a discreet whisper, also with 
one eye on the open window, how the dinner hadn’t 
been an ordinary dinner and it wasn’t expected that it 
should be enjoyed, but it was the cook’s tribute to her 
late master’s burial day,—a master they had only 
known a week, sad to say, but to whom they had both 
taken a great fancy, he being so pleasant-spoken and 
all for giving no trouble. 

Wemyss listened, sipping the comforting drink and 
smoking a cigar. 

Very different, said the parlourmaid, who seemed glad 
to talk, would the dinner have been if the cook hadn’t 


VERA 35 


liked the poor gentleman. Why, in one place where she 
and the cook were together, and the lady was taken 
just as the cook would have given notice if she hadn’t 
been because she was such a very dishonest and un- 
punctual lady, besides not knowing her place—no lady, 
of course, and never was—when she was taken, not 
sudden like this poor gentleman but bit by bit, on the 
day of her funeral the cook sent up a dinner you’d never 
think of,—she was like that, all fancy. Lucky it was 
that the family didn’t read between the lines, for it 
began with fried soles 

The parlourmaid paused, her eye anxiously on the 
window. Wemyss sat staring at her. 

“Did you say fried soles?” he asked, staring at her. 

“Yes sir. Fried soles. I didn’t see anything in that 
either at first. It’s how you spell it makes the differ- 
ence, Cook said. And the next course was’”—her voice 
dropped almost to inaudibleness—‘“‘devilled bones.” 

Wemyss hadn’t so much as smiled for nearly a fort- 
night, and now to his horror, for what could it possibly 
sound like to the two mourners on the lawn, he gave a 
sudden dreadful roar of laughter. He could hear it 
sounding hideous himself, 

The noise he made horrified the parlourmaid as 
much as it did him. She flew to the window and shut 
it. Wemyss, in his effort to strangle the horrid thing, 
choked and coughed, his table-napkin up to his face, 
his body contorted. He was very red, and the parlour- 
maid watched him in terror. He had seemed at first 
to be laughing, though what Uncle Wemyss (thus did 





36 VERA 


he figure in the conversations of the kitchen) could see 
to laugh at in the cook’s way of getting her own back, 
the parlourmaid, whose flesh had crept when she first 
heard the story, couldn’t understand; but presently 
she feared he wasn’t laughing at all but was being, in 
some very robust way, ill. Dread seized her, deaths 
being on her mind, lest perhaps here in the chair, so 
convulsively struggling behind a table-napkin, were 
the beginnings of yet another corpse. Having flown to 
shut the window she now flew to open it, and ran out 
panic-stricken into the garden to fetch the ladies. 

This cured Wemyss. He got up quickly, leaving his 
half-smoked cigar and half-drunk whisky, and followed 
her out just in time to meet Lucy and her aunt hurrying 
across the lawn towards the dining-room window. 

“I choked,” he said, wiping his eyes which indeed 
were very wet. 

“Choked?” repeated Miss Entwhistle anxiously. 
“We heard a most strange noise——” 


“That was me choking,’ said Wemyss. “It’s all 


right—it’s nothing at all,’ he added to Lucy, who was 
looking at him with a face of extreme concern. 

But he felt now that he had had about as much of 
the death and funeral atmosphere as he could stand. 
Reaction had set in, and his reactions were strong. He 
wanted to get away from woe, to be with normal, 
cheerful people again, to have done with conditions in 
which a laugh was the most improper of sounds. Here 


he was, being held down by the head, he felt, in a black 


VERA 37 


swamp,—first that ghastly business of Vera’s and now 
this woebegone family. 

Sudden and violent was Wemyss’s reaction, let loose 
by the parlourmaid’s story. Miss Entwhistle’s swollen 
eyes annoyed him, Even Lucy’s pathetic face made 
him impatient. It was against nature, all this. It 
shouldn’t be allowed to go on, it oughtn’t to be en- 
couraged. Heaven alone knew how much he had 
suffered, how much more he had suffered than the 
Entwhistles with their perfectly normal sorrow, and if 
he could feel it was high time now to think of other 
things surely the Entwhistles could. He was tired of 
funerals. He had carried this one through really 
brilliantly from start to finish, but now it was over and 
done with, and he wished to get back to naturalness. 
Death seemed to him highly unnatural. The mere fact 
that it only happened once to everybody showed how 
exceptional it was, thought Wemyss, thoroughly dis- 
gusted with it. Why couldn’t he and the Entwhistles 
go off somewhere to-morrow, away from this place 
altogether, go abroad for a bit, to somewhere cheerful, 
where nobody knew them and nobody would expect 
them to go about with long faces all day? Ostend, for 
instance? His mood of sympathy and gentleness had 
for the moment quite gone. He was indignant that 
there should be circumstances under which a man felt 
as guilty over a laugh as over acrime. A natural per- 
son like himself looked at things wholesomely. It was 
healthy and proper to forget horrors, to dismiss them 
from one’s mind. If convention, that offspring of 


38 VERA 


cruelty and hypocrisy, insisted that one’s misfortunes 
should be well rubbed in, that one should be forced to 
smart under them, and that the more one was seen to 
wince the more one was regarded as behaving creditably, 
—if convention insisted on this, and it did insist, as 
Wemyss had been experiencing himself since Vera’s 
accident, why then it ought to be defied. He had 
found he couldn’t defy it by himself, and came away 
solitary and wretched in accordance with what it 
expected, but he felt quite different now that he had 
Lucy and her aunt as trusting friends who looked up to 
him, who had no doubts of him and no criticisms. 
Health of mind had come back to him,—his own nat- 
ural wholesomeness, which had never deserted him in 
his life till this shocking business of Vera’s. 

“Id like to have some sensible talk with you,” he 
said, looking down at the two small black figures and 
solemn tired faces that were growing dim and wraith- 
like in the failing light of the garden. 

“With me or with Lucy?” asked Miss Entwhistle. 

By this time they both hung on his possible wishes, 
and watched him with the devout attentiveness of a 
pair of dogs. 

“With you and with Lucy,” said Wemyss, smiling 
at the upturned faces. He felt very conscious of being 
the male, of being in command, 

It was the first time he had called her Lucy. To Miss 
Entwhistle it seemed a matter of course, but Lucy 
herself flushed with pleasure, and again had the feeling 
of being taken care of and safe. Sad as she was at the 


VERA 39 


end of that sad day, she still was able to notice how nice 
her very ordinary name sounded in his kind man’s voice. 
She wondered what his own name was, and hoped it 
was something worthy of him,—not Albert, for in- 
stance. 

“Shall we go into the drawing-room?” asked Miss 
Entwhistle. 

“Why not to the mulberry tree?” said Wemyss, who 
naturally wished to hold Lucy’s little hand if possible, 
and could only do that in the dark. 

So they sat there as they had sat other nights, 
Wemyss in the middle, and Lucy’s hand, when it got 
dark enough, held close and comfortingly in his. 

“This little girl,” he began, ‘‘must get the roses back 
into her cheeks.” 

“Indeed, indeed she must,” agreed Miss Entwhistle, 
a catch in her voice at the mere reminder of the absence 
of Lucy’s roses, and consequently of what had driven 
them away. 

“How do you propose to set about it?” asked 
Wemyss. 

“Time,” gulped Miss Entwhistle. 

“Time?” 

“And patience. We must wait—we must both wait 
p-patiently till time has s-softened 6 

She hastily pulled out her handkerchief. 

‘No, no,’ said Wemyss, “I don’t at all agree. It 
isn’t natural, it isn’t reasonable to prolong sorrow. 
You'll forgive plain words, Miss Entwhistle, but I don’t 
know any others, and I say it isn’t right to wallow— 





40 VERA 


yes, wallow—in sorrow. Far from being patient one 
should be impatient. One shouldn’t wait resignedly for 
time to help one, one should up and take time by the 
forelock. In cases of this kind, and believe me I know 
what I’m talking about”’—it wa’s here that his hand, the 
one on the further side from Miss Entwhistle, descended 
gently on Lucy’s, and she made a little movement closer 
up to him—“‘it is due to oneself to refuse to be knocked 
out. Courage, spirit, is what one must aim at,—setting 
an example.” 

Ah, how wonderful he was, thought Lucy; so big, 
so brave, so simple, and so tragically recently himself 
the victim of the most awful of catastrophes. There 
was something burly about his very talk. Her darling 
father and his friends had talked quite differently. 
Their talk used to seem as if it ran about the room like 
liquid fire, it was so quick and shining; often it was 
quite beyond her till her father afterwards, when she 
asked him, explained it, put it more simply for her, 
eager as he always was that she should share and under- 
stand. She could understand every word of Wemyss’s. 
When he spoke she hadn’t to strain, to listen with all 
her might; she hardly had to think at all. She found 
this immensely reposeful in her present state. 

“Yes,’? murmured Miss Entwhistle into her handker- 
chief, “‘yes—you’re quite right, Mr. Wemyss—one 
ought—it would be more—more heroic. But then if 
one—if one has loved some one very tenderly—as I did 
my dear brother—and Lucy her most precious 
father 4 





VERA 41 


She broke off and wiped her eyes. 

“Perhaps,” she finished, “‘you haven’t ever loved 
anybody very—very particularly and lost them.” 

“Oh,” breathed Lucy at that, and moved still closer 
to him. 

Wemyss was deeply injured. Why should Miss 
Entwhistle suppose he had never particularly loved 
anybody? He seemed, on looking back, to have loved 
a great deal. Certainly he had loved Vera with the 
utmost devotion till she herself wore it down. He in- 
dignantly asked himself what this maiden lady could 
know of love. 

But there was Lucy’s little hand, so clinging, so 
understanding, nestling in his. It soothed him. 

There was a pause. Then he said, very gravely, 
“My wife died only a fortnight ago.” 

Miss Entwhistle was crushed. “Ah,” she cried, “but 
you must forgive me——” 


V 


EVERTHELESS he was not able to persuade 
N her to join him, with Lucy, in a trip abroad. 
She was tirelessly concerned to do and say 
everything she could that showed her deep sympathy 
with him in his loss—he had told her nothing beyond 
the bare fact, and she was not one to read about 
inquests—and her deep sense of obligation to him that 
he, labouring under so great a burden of sorrow of 
his own, should have helped them with such devotion and 
unselfishness in theirs; but she wouldn’t go abroad. 
She was going, she said, to her little house in London 
with Lucy. 

“What, in August?” exclaimed Wemyss. 

Yes, they would be quiet there, and indeed they were 
both worn out and only wished for solitude. 

“Then why not stay here?” asked Wemyss, who 
now considered Lucy’s aunt selfish. ‘This is solitary 
enough, in all conscience.” 

No, they neither of them felt they could bear to 
stay in that house. Lucy must go to the place least 
connected in her mind with her father. Indeed, indeed 
it was best. She did so understand and appreciate 
Mr. Wemyss’s wonderful and unselfish motives m 
suggesting the continent, but she and Lucy were in that 

49 : 


VERA 43 


state when the idea of a hotel and waiters and a band 
was simply impossible to them, and all they wished was 
to creep into the quiet and privacy of their own nest,— 
“Like wounded birds,” said poor Miss Entwhistle, 
looking up at him with much the piteous expression of 
a dog lifting an injured paw. 

“It’s very bad for Lucy to be encouraged to think 
she’s a wounded bird,” said Wemyss, controlling his 
disappointment as best he could. 

“You must come and see us in London and help us 
to feel heroic,” said Miss Entwhistle, with a watery 
smile. | 

“But I can come and see you much better and easier 
if you’re here,’ persisted Wemyss. 

Miss Entwhistle, however, though watery, was deter- 
mined. She refused to stay where she so conveniently 
was, and Wemyss now considered Lucy’s aunt obstinate 
as well as selfish. Also he thought her very ungrateful. 
She had made use of him, and now was going to leave 
him, without apparently giving him a thought, in the 
lurch. 

He was having a good deal of Miss Entwhistle, 
because during the two days that came after the funeral 
Lucy was practically invisible, engaged in collecting 
and packing her father’s belongings. Wemyss hung 
about the garden, not knowing when these activities 
mightn’t suddenly cease and not wishing to miss her if 
she did come out, and Miss Entwhistle, who couldn’t 
help Lucy in this—no one could help her in the heart- 
breaking work—naturally joined him. 


AA VERA 


He found these two days long. Miss Entwhistle felt 
there was a great bond between herself and him, and 
Wemyss felt there wasn’t. When she said there was 
he had difficulty in not contradicting her. Not only, 
Miss Entwhistle felt, and also explained, was there the 
bond of their dear Jim, whom both she and Mr. Wemyss 
had so much loved, but there was this communion of 
sorrow,—the loss of his wife, the loss of her brother, 
within the same fortnight. 

Wemyss shut his mouth tight at this and said 
nothing. | 

How natural for her, feeling so sorry for him, feeling 
so grateful to him, when from a window during those 
two days she beheld him sitting solitary beneath the 
mulberry tree, to go down and sit there with him; how 
natural that, when he got up, made restless, she sup- 
posed, by his memories, and began to pace the lawn, 
she should get up and sympathetically pace it too. She 
could not let this kind, tender-hearted man—he must 
be that, or Jim wouldn’t have been fond of him, besides 
she had seen it for herself in the way he had helped her 
and Lucy—she could not let him be alone with his sad 
thoughts. And he had a double burden of sad thoughts, 
a double loss to bear, for he had lost her dear brother 
as well as his poor wife. 

All Entwhistles were compassionate, and as she and 
Wemyss sat together or together paced, she kept up a 
flow of gentle loving-kindness. Wemyss smoked his 
_ pipe in practically unbroken silence. This was his way 
when he was holding on to himself. Miss Entwhistle 


VERA 45 


of course didn’t know he was holding on to himself, and 
taking his silence for the inarticulateness of deep un- 
happiness was so much touched that she would have 
done anything for him, anything that might bring this 
poor, kind, suffering fellow-creature comfort—except 
go to Ostend. From that dreadful suggestion she 
continued to shudder away; nor, though he tried 
again, even after all arrangements for leaving Cornwall 
had been made, would she be persuaded to stay where 
she was. 

Therefore Wemyss was forced to conclude that she 
was obstinate as well as selfish; and if it hadn’t been 
for the brief moments at meals when Lucy appeared, 
and through her unhappiness—what she was doing was 
obviously depressing her very much—smiled faintly at 
him and always went and sat as near him as she could, 
he would have found these two days intolerable. 

How atrocious, he thought, while he smoked in silence 
and held on to himself, that Lucy should be taken away 
from him by a mere maiden lady, an aunt, an unmarried 
aunt,—weakest and most negligible, surely of all 
relatives. How atrocious that such a person should 
have any right to come between him and Lucy, to say 
she wouldn’t do this, that, or the other that Wemyss 
proposed, and thus possess the power to make him 
unhappy. Miss Entwhistle was so little that he could 
have brushed her aside with the back of one hand; yet 
here again the strong monster public opinion stepped 
in and forced him to acquiesce in any plan she chose to 
make for Lucy, however desolate it left him, merely 


46 VERA 


because she stood to her in the anemic relationship of 
aunt. | 

During two mortal days, as he waited about in that 
garden so grievously infested by Miss Entwhistle, 
sounds of boxes being moved and drawers being opened 
and shut came through the windows, but except at 
meals there was no Lucy. He could have borne it if 
he hadn’t known they were the very last days he would 
be with her, but as things were it seemed cruel that he 
should be left like that to be miserable. Why should 
he be left like that to be miserable, just because of a lot 
of clothes and papers? he asked himself; and he felt 
he was getting thoroughly tired of Jim. 

“Haven't you done yet?” he said at tea on the 
second afternoon of this sorting out and packing, when 
Lucy got up to go indoors again, leaving him with Miss 
Entwhistle, even before he had finished his second cup 
of tea. 

“You’ve no idea what a lot there is,”’ she said, her 
voice sounding worn out; and she lingered a moment, 
her hand on the back of her aunt’s chair. “Father 
brought all his notes with him, and heaps and heaps of 
letters from people he was consulting, and I’m trying 
to get them straight—get them as he would have 
wished. y 

Miss Entwhistle put up her hand and stroked Lucy’s 
arm. 

“Tf you weren’t in this hurry to go away you’d have 
had more time and done it comfortably,” said Wemyss. 

“Oh, but I don’t want more time,” said Lucy quickly. 





VERA AT 


“Lucy means she couldn’t bear it drawn out,” said 
Miss Entwhistle, leaning her thin cheek against Lucy’s 
sleeve. ‘‘These things—they tear one’s heart. And 
nobody can help her. She has to go through with it 
alone.” And she drew Lucy’s face down to hers and 
held it there a moment, gently stroking it, the tears 
brimming up again in the eyes of both. 

Always tears, thought Wemyss. Yes, and there 
always would be tears as long as that aunt had hold of 
Lucy. She was the arch-wallower, he told himself, 
filling his pipe in silence after Lucy had gone in. 

He got up and went out at the gate and crossed the 
road and stood staring at the evening sea. Should he 
hear steps coming after him and Miss Entwhistle were 
to follow him even beyond the garden, he would proceed 
without looking round down to the cove and to the inn, 
where she must needs leave him alone. He had had 
enough. That Miss Entwhistle should explain to him 
what Lucy meant, he considered to be the last straw 
of her behaviour. Barging in, he said indignantly to 
himself ; barging in when nobody had asked her opinion 
or explanation of anything. And she had stroked 
Lucy’s face as though Lucy and her face and every- 
thing about her belonged to her, merely because she 
happened to be her aunt. Fancy explaining to him 
what Lucy really meant, taking upon herself the 
functions of interpreter, of go-between, when for a 
whole day and a half before she appeared on the scene 
—and she had only appeared on it at all thanks to his 


48 VERA 


telegram—Lucy and he had been in the closest fellow- 
ship, the closest communion. .. . 

Well, things couldn’t go on like this. He was not the 
man to be dominated by a relative. If he had lived 
in those sensible ancient days when people behaved 
wholesomely, he would have flung Lucy over his shoulder 
and walked off with her to Ostend or Paris and laughed 
at such insects as aunts. He couldn’t do that unfor- 
tunately, though where the harm would be in two 
mourners like himself and Lucy going together in search 
of relief he must say he was unable to see. Why should 
they be condemned to search for relief separately? 
Their sorrows, surely, would be their chaperone, es- 
pecially his sorrow. Nobody would object to Lucy’s 
nursing him, supposing he were dangerously ill; why 
should she not be equally beyond the reach of tongues if 
she nursed the bitter wounds of his spirit? 

He heard steps coming down the garden path to the 
gate. There, he thought, was the aunt again, searching 
for him, and he stood squarely and firmly with his back 
to the road, smoking his pipe and staring at the sea. If 
he heard the gate open and she dared to come through 
it he would instantly walk away. In the garden he 
had to endure being joined by her, because there he was 
in the position of guest; but let hex try to join him on 
the King’s highway! 

Nobody opened the gate, however, and, as he heard 
no retreating footsteps either, after a minute he began 
to want to look around. He struggled against this wish, 
because the moment Miss Entwhistle caught his eye 


VERA 49 


she would come out to him, he felt sure. But Wemyss 
was not much good at struggling against his wishes,— 
he usually met with defeat; and after briefly doing so 
on this occasion he did look around. And what a good 
thing he did, for it was Lucy. 

There she was, leaning on the gate just as she had 
been the first morning, but this time her eyes instead of 
being wide and blank were watching him with a deep 
and touching interest. 

He got across the road in one stride. “Lucy!’? he 
exclaimed. “You? Why didn’t you call me? We’ve 
wasted half an hour < 





“About two minutes,” she said, smiling up at him as 
he, on the other side of the gate, folded both her hands 
in his just as he had done that first morning; and the 
relief it was to Wemyss to see her again alone, to see 
that smile of trust and—surely—content in getting 
back to him! 

Then her face went grave again. “I’ve finished 
father’s things now,” she said, “‘and so I came to look 
for you.” 

“Lucy, how can you leave me,” was Wemyss’s answer 
to that, his voice vibrating, “how can you go away from 
me to-morrow and hand me over again to the torments 
—yes, torments, I was in before?” 

“But I have to go,” she said, distressed. “And you 
mustn’t say that. You mustn’t let yourself be like that 
again. You won’t be, I know—~you’re so brave and 
strong.” 

“Not without you. I’m nothing without you,’ 


> said 


50 VERA 


Wemyss; and his eyes, as he searched hers, were full 
of tears. ( 

At this Lucy flushed, and then, staring at him, her 
face went slowly white. These words of his, the way 
he said them, reminded her—oh no, it wasn’t possible; 
he and she stood in a relationship to each other like 
none, she was sure, that had ever yet been. It was 
an intimacy arrived at at a bound, with no preliminary 
steps. It was a holy thing, based on mutual grief, 
protected from everything ordinary by the great wings 
of Death. He was her wonderful friend, big in his 
simplicity, all care for her and goodness, a very rock 
of refuge and shelter in the wilderness she had been 
flung into when he found her. And that he, bleeding 
as he was himself from the lacerations of the violent 
rending asunder from his wife to whom he had been, 
as he had told her, devoted, that he should—oh no, 
it wasn’t possible; and she hung her head, shocked at 
her thoughts. For the way he had said those words, 
and the words themselves, had reminded her—no, she 
could hardly bear to think it, but they had reminded 
her of the last time’ she had been proposed to. The 
man—he was a young man; she had never been 
proposed to by any one even approximately Wemyss’s 
age—had said almost exactly that: Without you I am 
nothing. And just in that same deep, vibrating voice. 

How dreadful thoughts could be, Lucy said to her- 
self, overcome that such a one at such a moment 
should thrust itself into her mind. Hateful of her, 
hateful, ... 


VERA 51 


She hung her head in shame; and Wemyss, looking 
down at the little bobbed head with its bright, thick 
young hair bent over their folded hands as though it 
were saying its prayers,—Wemyss, not having his pipe 
in his mouth to protect him and help him to hold on 
to himself, for he had hastily stuffed it in his pocket, 
all alight as it was, when he saw her at the gate, and 
there at that moment it was burning holes,—Wemyss, 
after a brief struggle with his wishes, in which as usual 
he was defeated, stooped and began to kiss Lucy’s hair. - 
And having begun, he continued. 

She was horrified. At the first kiss she started as if 
she had been hit, and then, clinging to the gate, she 
stood without moving, without being able to think or 
lift her head, in the same attitude bowed over his and 
her own hands, while this astonishing thing was being 
done to her hair. Death all around them, death per- 
vading every corner of their lives, death in its blackest 
shapé brooding over him, and—kisses! Her mind, if 
anything so gentle could be said to be in anything that 
sounds so loud, was in an uproar. She had had the 
complete, guileless trust in him of a child for a tender 
and sympathetic friend,—a friend, not a father, though 
he was old enough to be her father, because in a father, 
however much hidden by sweet comradeship as it had 
been in hers, there always at the back of everything 
was, after all, authority, And it had been even more 
than the trust of a child in its friend: it had been the 
trust of a child in a fellow-child hit by’ the same pun- 


Uy. OF ILL Lib. 


52 VERA 


ishment,—a simple fellowship, a wordless under- 
standing. | 

She hung on to the gate while her thoughts flew 
about in confusion within her. These kisses—and his 
wife just dead—and dead so terribly—how long would 
she have to stand there with this going on—she couldn’t — 
lift up her head, for then she felt it would only get 
worse—she couldn’t turn and run into the house, be- 
cause he was holding her hands. He oughtn’t to have 
—oh, he oughtn’t to have—it wasn’t fair. . . 

Then—what was he saying? She heard him say, 
in an absolutely broken voice, laying his head on hers, 
‘“We two poor things—we two poor things’”—and then 
he said and did nothing more, but kept his head like 
that, and presently, thick though her hair was, through 
it came wetness. 

At that Lucy’s thoughts suddenly stopped flying 
about and were quite still. Her heart went to wax 
within her, melted again into pity, into a great flood 
of pitiful understanding. The dreadfulness of lonely 
grief. . . . Was there anything in the world so blackly 
desolate as to be left alone in grief? This poor broken 
fellow-creature—and she herself, so lost, so lost in 
loneliness—they were two half-drowned things, clinging 
together in a shipwreck—how could she let him go, 
leave him to himself—how could she be let go, left to 
herself? ... 

“Lucy,” he said, “‘look at me——” 

She lifted her head. He loosed her hands, and put 
his arms round her shoulders. 


VERA 53 


“Took at me,” he said; for though she had lifted her 
head she hadn’t lifted her eyes. 

She looked at him. Tears were on his face. When 
she saw them her mouth began to quiver and twitch. 
She couldn’t bear that. 

“Lucy ” he said again. 

She shut her eyes. ‘“Yes’—she breathed, “yes.” 
And with one hand she felt along up his coat till she 
reached his face, and shakingly tried to brush away 
its tears. 





VI 


FTER that, for the moment anyhow, it was all 
A over with Lucy. She was engulfed. Wemyss 
“ kissed her shut eyes, he kissed her parted lips, 
he kissed her dear, delightful bobbed hair. His tears 
dried up; or rather, wiped away by her little blind, 
shaking hand, there were no more of them. Death for 
Wemyss was indeed at that moment swallowed up in 
victory. Instantly he passed from one mood to the 
other, and when she finally did open her eyes at his 
orders and look at him, she saw bending over her a face 
she hardly recognised, for she had not yet seen him 
happy. Happy! How could he be happy, as happy 
as that all in a moment? She stared at him, and even 
through her confusion, her bewilderment, was frankly 
amazed, | 
Then the thought crept into her mind that it was 
she who had done this, it was she who had transformed 
him, and her stare softened into a gaze almost of awe, 
with something of the look in it of a young mother 
when she first sees her new-born baby. ‘So that is 
what it is like,” the young mother whispers to herself 
in a sort of holy surprise, “and I have made it, and it 
is mine”; and so, gazing at this new, effulgent Wemyss, 
did Lucy say to herself with the same feeling of wonder, 
54 


VERA 55 


of awe at her own handiwork, “So that is what he 
is like.” 

Wemyss’s face was indeed one great beam. He 
simply at that moment couldn’t remember that he had 
ever been miserable. He seemed to have his arms 
round Love itself; for never did any one look more 
like the very embodiment of his idea of love than Lucy 
then as she gazed up at him, so tender, so resistless. 
But there were even more wonderful moments after 
dinner in the darkening garden, while Miss Entwhistle 
was upstairs packing ready to start by the early train 
next morning, and they hadn’t got the gate between 
them, and Lucy of her own accord laid her cheek 
against his coat, nestling her head into it as though 
there indeed she knew that she was safe. 

“My baby—my baby,” Wemyss murmured, in an 
ecstasy of passionate protectiveness, in his turn flooded 
by maternal feeling. ‘You shall never cry again— 
never, never.”’ 

It irked him that their engagement—Lucy demurred 
at first to the word engagement, but Wemyss, holding 
her tight in his arms, said he would very much like to 
know, then, by what words she would describe her 
position at that moment—it irked him that it had to 
be a secret. He wanted instantly to shout out to the 
whole world his glory and his pride. But this under 
the tragic circumstances of their mourning was even to 
Wemyss clearly impossible. Generally he brushed aside 
the word impossible if it tried to come between him 
and the smallest of his wishes, but that inquest was 


56 VERA 


still too vividly in his mind, and the faces of his so- 
called friends. What the faces of his so-called friends 
would look like if he, before Vera had been dead a 
fortnight, should approach them with the news of his 
engagement even Wemyss, a person not greatly 
imaginative, could picture. And Lucy, quite over- 
whelmed, first by his tears and then by his joy, no 
longer could judge anything. She no longer knew 
whether it were very awful to be love-making in the 
middle of death, or whether it were, as Wemyss said, 
the natural glorious self-assertiveness of life. She 
knew nothing any more except that he and she, ship- 
wrecked, had saved each other, and that for the moment 
nothing was required of her, no exertion, nothing at all, 
except to sit passive with her head on his breast, while 
he called her his baby and softly, wonderfully, kissed 
her closed eyes. She couldn’t think; she needn’t think; 
oh, she was tired—and this was rest. 

But after he had gone that night, and all the next 
day in the train without him, and for the first few days 
in London, misgivings laid hold of her. 

That she should be being made love to, be engaged 
as Wemyss insisted, within a week of her father’s death, 
could not, she thought, be called anything worse than 
possibly and at the outside an irrelevance. It did no 
harm to her father’s dear memory; it in no way 
encroached on her adoration of him. He would have 
been the first to be pleased that she should have found 
comfort. But what worried her was that Everard— 
Wemyss’s Christian name was Everard—should be able 


VERA 57 


to think of such things as love and more marriage when 
his wife had just died so awfully, and he on the very 
spot, and he the first to rush out and see... . 

She found that the moment she was away from him 
she couldn’t get over this. It went round and round 
in her head as a thing she was unable, by herself, to 
understand. While she was with him he overpowered 
her into a torpor, into a shutting of her eyes and her 
thoughts, into just giving herself up, after the shocks 
and agonies of the week, to the blessedness of a soothed 
and caressed semi-consciousness; and it was only when 
his first letters began to come, such simple, adoring 
letters, taking the situation just as it was, just as life 
and death between them had offered it, untroubled by 
questioning, undimmed by doubt, with no looking back- 
ward but with a touching, thankful acceptance of the 
present, that she gradually settled down into that 
placidity which was at once the relief and the astonish- 
ment of her aunt. And his letters were so easy to 
understand. They were so restfully empty of the 
difficult thoughts and subtle, half-said things her father 
used to write and all his friends. His very handwriting 
was the round, slow handwriting of a boy. Lucy had 
loved him before; but now she fell in love with hin, 
and it was because of his letters. 


VII 


ISS ENTWHISTLE lived in a slim little 
M house in Eaton Terrace. It was one of 
those little London houses where you go in 
and there’s a dining-room, and you go up and there’s 
a drawing-room, and you go up again and there’s a 
bedroom and a dressing-room, and you go up yet more 
and there’s a maid’s room and a bathroom, and then 
that’s all. For one person it was just enough; for two 
it was difficult. It was so difficult that Miss Entwhistle 
had never had any one stay with her before, and the 
dressing-room had to be cleared out of all her clothes 
and toques, which then had nowhere to go to and became 
objects that you met at night hanging over banisters 
or perched with an odd air of dashingness on the ends 
of the bath, before Lucy could go in. 

But no Entwhistle ever minded things like that. No 
trouble seemed to any of them too great to take for a 
friend; while as for one’s own dear niece, if only she 
could have been induced to take the real bedroom and 
let her aunt, who knew the dressing-room’s ways, sleep 
there instead, that aunt—on such liberal principles was 
this family constructed—would have been perfectly 
happy. 

Lucy, of course, only smiled at that suggestion, and 

58 


VERA 59 


inserted herself neatly into the dressing-room, and the 
first weeks of their mourning, which Miss Entwhistle 
had dreaded for them both, proceeded to flow by with 
a calm, an unruffledness, that could best be described 
by the word placid. 

In that small house, unless the inhabitants were ac- 
commodating and adaptable, daily life would be a trial. 
Miss Entwhistle well knew Lucy would give no trouble 
that she could help, but their both being in such trouble 
themselves would, at such close quarters, she had been 
afraid, inevitably keep their sorrow raw by sheer 
rubbing against each other. 

To her surprise and great relief nothing of the sort 
happened. There seemed to be no rawness to rub. 
Not only Lucy didn’t fret—her white face and heavy 
eyes of the days in Cornwall had gone—but she was 
almost from the first placid. Just on leaving Cornwall, 
and for a day or two after, she was a little bouleversée, 
and had a curious kind of timidity in her manner to 
her aunt, and crept rather than walked about the house, 
but this gradually disappeared; and if Miss Entwhistle 
hadn’t known her, hadn’t known of her terrible loss, 
she would have said that here was some one who was 
quietly happy. It was subdued, but there it was, as 
if she had some private source of confidence and 
warmth. Had she by any chance got religion? won- 
dered her aunt, who herself had never had it, and neither 
had Jim, and neither had any Entwhistles she had ever 
heard of. She dismissed that. It was too unlikely 
for one of their breed. But even the frequent necessary 


60 VERA 


visits to the house in Bloomsbury she and her father 
had lived in so long didn’t quite blot out the odd effect 
Lucy produced of being somehow inwardly secure. 
Presently, when these sad settlings up were done with, 
and the books and furniture stored, and the house 
handed over to the landlord, and she no longer had to 
go to it and be among its memories, her face became 
what it used to be,—delicately coloured, softly rounded, 
ready to light up at a word, at a look. 

Miss Entwhistle was puzzled. This serenity of the 
one who was, after all, chief mourner, made her feel it 
would be ridiculous if she outdid Lucy in grief. If 
Lucy could pull herself together so marvellously—and 
she supposed it must be that, it must be that she was 
heroically pulling herself together—she for her part 
wouldn’t be behindhand. Her darling Jim’s memory 
should be honoured, then, like this: she would bless 
God for him, bless God that she had had him, and 
in a high thankfulness continue cheerfully on her way. 

Such were some of Miss Entwhistle’s reflections and 
conclusions as she considered Lucy. She seemed to 
have no thought of the future,—again to her aunt’s 
surprise and relief, who had been afraid she would very 
soon begin to worry about what she was to do next. 
She never talked of it; she never apparently thought 
of it. She seemed to be—yes, that was the word, 
decided Miss Entwhistle observing her—resting. But 
resting on what? <A second time Miss Entwhistle 
dismissed the idea of religion. Impossible, she thought, 
that Jim’s girl,—yet it did look very like religion. 


VERA 61 


There was, it appeared, enough money left scraped 
together by Jim for Lucy in case of his death to pro- 
duce about two hundred pounds a year. This wasn’t 
much; but Lucy apparently didn’t give it a thought. 
Probably she didn’t realise what it meant, thought her 
aunt, because of her life with her father having been 
so easy, surrounded by all those necessities for an 
invalid which were, in fact, to ordinary people luxuries. 

No one had been appointed her guardian. There was 
no mention of Mr. Wemyss in the will. It was a very 
short will, leaving everything to Lucy. This, as far as 
it went, was admirable, thought Miss Entwhistle, but 
unfortunately there was hardly anything to leave. 
Except books; thousands of books, and the old charm- 
ing furniture of the Bloomsbury house. Well, Lucy 
should live with her for as long as she could endure 
the dressing-room, and perhaps they might take a house 
together a little less tiny, though Miss Entwhistle had 
lived in the one she was in for so long that it wouldn’t 
be very easy for her to leave it. 

Meanwhile the first weeks of mourning slid by in an 
increasing serenity, with London empty and no one 
to intrude on what became presently distinctly recog- 
nisable as happiness. She and Lucy agreed so perfectly. 
And they weren’t altogether alone either, for Mr. 
Wemyss came regularly twice a week, coming on the 
same days, and appearing so punctually on the stroke 
of five that at last she began to set her clocks by him. 

He, too, poor man, seemed to be pulling himself 
together. He had none of the air of the recently 


62 VERA 


bereaved, either in his features or his clothes. Not that 
he wore coloured: ties or anything like that, but he 
certainly didn’t produce an effect of blackness. His 
trousers, she observed, were grey; and not a particu- 
larly dark grey either. Well, perhaps it was no longer 
the fashion, thought Miss Entwhistle, eyeing these 
trousers with some doubt, to be very unhappy. But 
she couldn’t help thinking there ought to be a band on 
his left arm to counteract the impression of lightheart- 
edness in his legs; a crape band, no matter how narrow, 
or a band of black anything, not necessarily crape, such 
as she was sure it was usual in these circumstances 
to wear. 

However, whatever she felt about his legs she wel- 
comed him with the utmost cordiality, mindful of his 
kindness to them down in Cornwall, and of how she 
had clung to him there as her rock; and she soon got 
to remember the way he liked his tea, and had the 
biggest chair placed comfortably ready for him—the 
ehairs were neither very big nor numerous in her spare 
little drawing-room—and did all she could in the way 
of hospitality and pleasant conversation. But the 
more she saw of him, and the more she heard of his 
talk, the more she wondered at Jim. 

Mr. Wemyss was most good-natured and she was 
sure, and as she knew from experience, was most kind 
and thoughtful; but the things he said were so very 
unlike the things Jim said, and his way of looking at 
things was so very unlike Jim’s way. Not that there 
wasn’t room in the world for everybody, Miss Ent- 


VERA 63 


whistle reminded herself, sitting at her tea-table observ- 
ing Wemyss, who looked particularly big and prosper- 
ous in her small frugal room, and no doubt one star 
differed from another in glory; still, she did wonder at 
Jim. And if Mr. Wemyss could bear the loss of his wife 
to the extent of grey trousers, how was it he couldn’t 
bear Jim’s name so much as mentioned? Whenever 
the talk got on to Jim—it couldn’t be kept off him in 
a circle composed of his daughter and his sister and his 
friend—she noticed that Mr. Wemyss went silent. She 
would have taken this for excess of sensibility and the 
sign of a deep capacity for faithful devotion if it 
_hadn’t been for those trousers. Faced by them, it 
perplexed her. 

While Miss Entwhistle was thinking like this and 
observing Wemyss, who never observed her at all after 
a first moment of surprise that she should look and 
behave so differently from the liquid lady of the cottage 
in Cornwall, that she should sit so straight and move 
so briskly, he and Lucy were, though present in the 
body, absent in love. Round them was drawn that 
magic circle through which nobody and nothing can 
penetrate, and within it they sat hand in hand and 
safe. Lucy’s whole heart was his. He had only to 
come into the room for her to feel content. There was 
a naturalness, a bigness about his way of looking at 
things that made intricate, tormenting feelings shrink 
away in his presence ashamed. Quite apart from her 
love for him, her gratitude, her longing that he should 
go on now being happy and forget his awful tragedy, 


64 VERA 


he was so very comfortable. She had never met any 
one so comfortable to lean on mentally. Bodily, on 
the few occasions on which her aunt was out of the 
room, he was comfortable too; he reminded her of the 
very nicest of sofas,—expensive ones, all cushions. 
But mentally he was more than comfortable, he was 
positively luxurious. Such perfect rest, listening to his 
talk. No thinking needed. Things according to him 
were either so, or so. With her father things had never 
been either so, or so; and one had had to frown, and 
concentrate, and make efforts to follow and understand 
his distinctions, his infinitely numerous, delicate, 
difficult distinctions. Everard’s plain division of every- 
thing into two categories only, snow-white and jet 
black, was as reposeful as the Roman church. She 
hadn’t got to strain or worry, she had only to surren- 
der. And to what love, to what safety! At night she 
couldn’t go to bed for thinking of how happy she was. 
She would sit quite still in the little dressing-room, her 
hands in her lap, and a proverb she had read some- 
where running in her head: 


When God shuts the door He opens the window. 


Not for a moment, hardly, had she been left alone to 
suffer. Instantly, almost, Everard had come into her 
life and saved her. Lucy had indeed, as her aunt had 
twice suspected, got religion, but her religion was 
Wemyss. Ah, how she loved him! And every night 
she slept with his last letter under her pillow on the 
side of her heart. 


VERA 65 


As for Wemyss, if Lucy couldn’t get over having 
got him he couldn’t get over having got Lucy. He 
hadn’t had such happiness as this, of this quality of 
tenderness, of goodness, in his life before. What he 
had felt for Vera had not at any time, he was sure, even 
at the beginning, been like this, While for the last few 
years—oh, well. Wemyss, when he found himself 
thinking of Vera, pulled up short. He declined to think 
of her now. She had filled his thoughts enough lately, 
and how terribly. His little angel Lucy had healed 
that wound, and there was no use in thinking of an old 
wound; nobody healthy ever did that. He had ex- 
plained to Lucy, who at first had been a little morbid, 
how wrong it is, how really wicked, besides being in- 
tensely stupid, not to get over things. Life, he had 
said, is for the living; let the dead have death. The 
present.is the only real possession a man has, whatever 
clever people may say; and the wise man, who is also 
the natural man of simple healthy instincts and a 
proper natural shrinking from death and disease, does 
not allow the past, which after all anyhow is done for, 
to intrude upon, much less spoil, the present. That 
is what, he explained, the past will always do if it can. 
The only safe way to deal with it is to forget it. 

“But I don’t want to forget mine,” Lucy had said 
at that, opening her eyes which as usual had been 
shut, because the commas of Wemyss’s talk with her 
when they chanced to be alone were his soothing, 
soporific kisses dropped gently on her closed eyelids. 
“Father if 





66 VERA 


“Oh, you may remember yours,” he had answered, 
smiling tenderly down at the head lying on his breast. 
“It’s such a little one. But you'll see when you’re 
older if your Everard wasn’t right.” 

To Wemyss in his new happiness it seemed that Vera 
had belonged to another life altogether, an elderly, stale 
life from which, being healthy-minded, he had managed 
to unstick himself and to emerge born again all new and 
fresh and fitted for the present. She was forty when 
she died. She had started life five years younger than 
he was, but had quickly caught him up and passed him, 
and had ended, he felt, by being considerably his senior, 
And here was Lucy, only twenty-two anyhow, and 
looking like twelve. The contrast never ceased to 
delight him, to fill him with pride. And how pretty 
she was, now that she had left off crying. He adored 
her bobbed hair that gave her the appearance of a child 
or a very young boy, and he adored the little delicate 
lines of her nose and nostrils, and her rather big, kind 
mouth that so easily smiled, and her sweet eyes, the 
colour of Love-in-a-Mist. Not that he set any store 
by prettiness, he told himself; all he asked in a woman 
was devotion. But her being pretty would make it 
only the more exciting when the moment came to show 
her to his friends, to show his little girl to those friends 
who had dared slink away from him after Vera’s death, 
and say, “Look here—look at this perfect little thing— 
she believes in me all right!” 


VIII 


ONDON being empty, Wemyss had it all his 
own way. No one else was there to cut him 
out, as his expression was. Lucy had many 

letters with offers of every kind of help from her 

father’s friends, but naturally she needed no help and 
had no wish to see anybody in her present condition of 
secret contentment, and she replied to them with 
thanks and vague expressions of hope that later on 
they might all meet. One young man—he was the 
one who often proposed to her—wasn’t to be put off 
like that, and journeyed all the way from Scotland, 
so great was his devotion, and found out from the 
caretaker of the Bloomsbury house that she was living 
with her aunt, and called at Eaton Terrace. But that 
afternoon Lucy and Miss Entwhistle were taking the 
air in a car Wemyss had hired, and at the very moment 
the young man was being turned away from the Eaton 

Terrace door Lucy was being rowed about the river at 

Hampton Court—very slowly, because of how soon 

Wemyss got hot—and her aunt, leaning on the stone 

parapet at the end of the Palace gardens, was observing 

her. It was a good thing the young man wasn’t observ- 
ing her too, for it wouldn’t have made him happy. 
“What is Mr. Wemyss?” asked Miss Entwhistle 
67 


68 VERA 


unexpectedly that evening, just as they were going to 
bed. 

Lucy was taken’aback. Her aunt hadn’t asked a 
question or said a thing about him up to then, except 
general comments on his kindness and good-nature. 

“What is Mr. Wemyss?” she repeated stupidly; for 
she was not only taken aback, but also, she discovered, 
she had no idea. It had never occurred to her even to 
wonder what he was, much less to ask. She had been, 
as it were, asleep the whole time in a perfect content- 
ment on his breast. | 

‘Yes. What is he besides being a widower?” said 
Miss Entwhistle. ‘We know he’s that, but it is hardly 
a profession.” 

“Y—don’t think I know,” said Lucy, looking and 
feeling very stupid. 

“Oh well, perhaps he isn’t anything,” said her aunt 
kissing her good-night. “Except punctual,’’ she added, 
smiling, pausing a moment at her bedroom door. 

And two or three days later, when Wemyss had again 
hired a car to take them for an outing to Windsor, 
while she and Lucy were tidying themselves for tea in 
the ladies’ room of the hotel she turned from the look- 
ing-glass in the act of pinning back some hair loosened 
by motoring, and in spite of having a hairpin in her 
mouth said, again suddenly, ““What did Mrs. Wemyss 
die of ?” 

This unnerved Lucy. If she had stared stupidly at 
her aunt at the other question she stared aghast at her 
at this one. 


9 


VERA 69 
“What did she die of?” she repeated, flushing. 


“Yes. What illness was it?” asked her aunt, con- 
tinuing to pin. 

“Jt—wasn’t an illness,” said Lucy helplessly. 

“Not an illness?” 

““I—believe it was an accident.” 

“An accident?” said Miss Entwhistle, taking the 
hairpin out of her mouth and in her turn staring. 
“What sort of an accident?” 

“T think a rather serious one,” said Lucy, completely 
unnerved. 

How could she bear to tell that dreadful story, the 
knowledge of which seemed somehow so intimately to 
bind her and Everard together with a sacred, terrible 
tie? 

At that her aunt remarked that an accident resulting 
in death would usually be described as serious, and 
asked what its nature, apart from its seriousness, had 
been; and Lucy, driven into a corner, feeling instinc- 
tively that her aunt, who had already once or twice 
expressed what she said was her surprised admiration 
for Mr. Wemyss’s heroic way of bearing his bereave- 
ment, might be too admiringly surprised altogether if 
she knew how tragically much he really had to bear, 
and might begin to inquire into the reasons of this 
heroism, took refuge in saying what she now saw she 
ought to have begun by saying, even though it wasn’t 
true, that she didn’t know. 

“Ah,” said her aunt. ‘‘Well—poor man. It’s 
wonderful how he bears things.” And again in her 


70 VERA 


mind’s eye, and with an increased doubt, she saw the 
grey trousers. | 

That day at tea Wemyss with the simple naturalness 
Lucy found so restful, the almost bald way he had of 
talking frankly about things more sophisticated people 
wouldn’t have mentioned, began telling them of the last 
time he had been at Windsor. 

It was the summer before, he said, and he and his 
wife—at this Miss Entwhistle became attentive—had 
motored down one Sunday to lunch in that very room, 
and it had been so much crowded, and the crowding 
had been so monstrously mismanaged, that positively 
they had had to go away without having had lunch 
at all. 

“Positively without having had any lunch at all,’ 
repeated Wemyss, looking at them with a face full of 
astonished aggrievement at the mere recollection. 

“Ah,” said Miss Entwhistle, leaning across to him, 
“don’t let us revive sad memories.” 

Wemyss stared at her. Good heavens, he thought, 
did she think he was talking about Vera? Any one 
with a grain of sense would know he was only talking 
about the lunch he hadn’t had. 

He turned impatiently to Lucy, and addressed his 
next remark to her. But in another moment there was 
her aunt again. 

“Mr. Wemyss,” she said, “I’ve been dying to ask 
you 39 

Again he was forced to attend. The pure air and 
rapid motion of the motoring intended to revive and 





VERA pg 


brace his little love were apparently reviving and 
bracing his little love’s aunt as well, for lately he had 
been unable to avoid noticing a tendency on her part 
to assert herself. During his first eight visits to Eaton 
Terrace—that made four weeks since his coming back 
to London and six since the funeral in Cornwall—he 
had hardly known she was in the room; except, of 
course, that she was in the room, completely hindering 
his courting. During those eight visits his first impres- 
sion of her remained undisturbed in his mind: she was 
a wailing creature who had hung round him in Cornwall 
in a constant state of tears. Down there she had 
behaved exactly like the traditional foolish woman when 
there is a death about,—no common sense, no grit, cry- 
ing if you looked at her, and keeping up a continual 
dismal recital of the virtues of the departed. Also she 
had been obstinate; and she had, besides, shown unmis- 
takable signs of selfishness. When he paid his first 
call in Eaton Terrace he did notice that she had con- 
siderably, indeed completely, dried up, and was there- 
fore to that extent improved, but she still remained for 
him just Lucy’s aunt,—somebody who poured out the 
tea, and who unfortunately hardly ever went out of the 
room; a necessary, though luckily a transitory, evil. 
But now it was gradually being borne in on him that she 
really existed, on her own account, independently. 
She asserted herself. Even when she wasn’t saying 
anything—and often she said hardly a word during an 
entire outing—she still somehow asserted herself. 
And here she was asserting herself very much indeed, 


G2 VERA 


and positively asking him across a tea-table which was 
undoubtedly for the moment his, asking him straight 
out what, if anything, he did in the way of a trade, 
profession or occupation. 

She was his guest, and he regarded it as less than 
seemly for a guest to ask a host. what he did. Not that 
he wouldn’t gladly have told her if it had come from 
him of his own accord. Surely a man has a right, he 
thought, to his own accord. At all times Wemyss 
disliked being asked questions. Even the most innocent, 
ordinary questions appeared to him to be an encroach- 
ment on the right he surely had to be let alone. 

Lucy’s aunt between sips of tea—his tea—pretended, 
pleasantly it is true, and clothing what could be nothing 
but idle curiosity in words that were not disagreeable, 
that she was dying to know what he was. She could 
see for herself, she said, smiling down at the leg nearest 
her, that he wasn’t a bishop, she was sure he wasn’t 
either a painter, musician or writer, but she wouldn’t 
be in the least surprised if he were to tell her he was an 
admiral. 

Wemyss thought this intelligent of the aunt. He 
had no objection to being taken for an admiral; they 
were an honest, breezy lot. 

Placated, he informed her that he was on the Stock 
Exchange. 

“Ah, nodded Miss Entwhistle, looking wise because 
on this subject she so completely wasn’t, the Stock 
Exchange being an institution whose nature and opera- 
tions were alien to anything the Entwhistles were 


VERA 73 


familiar with, “ah yes. Quite. Bulls and bears. Now 
I come to look at it, you have the Stock Exchange eye.” 

“Foolish woman,” thought Wemyss, who for some 
reason didn’t like being told before Lucy that he had 
the Stock Exchange eye; and he dismissed her im- 
patiently from his mind and concentrated on his little 
love, asking himself while he did so how short he could, 
with any sort of propriety, cut this unpleasant time of 
restricted courting, of never being able to go anywhere 
with her unless her tiresome aunt came too. 

Nearly two months now since both those deaths; 
surely Lucy’s aunt might soon be told now of the 
engagement. It was after this outing that he began 
in his letters, and in the few moments he and she were 
alone, to urge Lucy to tell her aunt. Nobody else need 
know, he wrote; it could go on being kept secret from 
the world; but the convenience of her aunt’s knowing 
was so obvious,—think of how she would then keep out 
of the way, think of how she would leave them to 
themselves, anyhow indoors, anyhow in the house in 
Eaton Terrace. 

Lucy, however, was reluctant. She demurred. She 
wrote begging him to be patient. She said that every 
week that passed would make their engagement less a 
thing that need surprise. She said that at present it 
would take too much explaining, and she wasn’t sure 
that even at the end of the explanation her aunt would 
understand. _ 

Wemyss wrote back brushing this aside. He said 
her aunt would have to understand, and if she didn’t 


74 VERA 


what did it matter so long as she knew? The great 
thing was that she should know. Then, he said, she 
would leave them alone together, instead of for ever 
sticking; and his little love must see how splendid it 
would be for him to come and spend happy hours with 
her quite alone. What was an aunt after all? he asked. 
What could she possibly be, compared to Lucy’s own 
Everard? Besides, he disliked secrecy, he said. No 
honest man could stand an atmosphere of concealment. 
His little girl must make up her mind to tell her aunt, 
and believe that her Everard knew best; or, if she 
preferred it, he would tell her himself. 

Lucy didn’t prefer it, and was beginning to feel 
worried, because as the days went on Wemyss grew 
more and more persistent the more he became bored by 
Miss Entwhistle’s development of an independent and 
inquiring mind, and she hated having to refuse or even 
to defer doing anything he asked, when her aunt one 
morning at breakfast, in the very middle of apparent 
complete serene absorption in her bacon, looked up 
suddenly over the coffee-pot and, said, “How long had 
your father known Mr. Wemyss?” 

This settled things. Lucy felt she could bear no 
more of these shocks. A clean breast was the only 
thing left for her, 

“Aunt Dot,” she stammered—Miss Entwhistle’s 


Christian name was Dorothy,—“I’d like—I’ve got—I 
39 





want to tell you 
“After breakfast,” said Miss Entwhistle briskly. 


VERA 75 


“We shall need lots of time, and to be undisturbed. 
We'll go up into the drawing-room.” 

And immediately she began talking about other 
things. 

Was it possible, thought Lucy, her eyes carefully on 
her toast and butter, that Aunt Dot suspected? 


IX 


had suspected, only she hadn’t suspected anything 
like all that was presently imparted to her, and 
she found great difficulty in assimilating it. And two 
hours later Lucy, standing in the middle of the draw- 
ing-room, was still passionately saying to her, and 


I: was not only possible, but the fact. Aunt Dot 


saying it for perhaps the tenth time, “But don’t you 
see? It’s just because what happened to him was so 
awful. It’s nature asserting itself. If he couldn’t be 
engaged now, he couldn’t reach up out of such a pit 
of blackness and get into touch with living things 
again and somebody who sympathises and—is fond of 
him, he would die, die or go mad; and oh, what’s the 
use to the world of somebody good and fine being left 
to die or go mad? Aunt Dot, what’s the use?” 

And her aunt, sitting in her customary chair by the 
fireplace, continued to assimilate with difficulty. Also 
her face was puckered into folds of distress. She was 
seriously upset. 

Lucy, looking at her, felt a kind of despair that she 
wasn’t being able to make her aunt, whom she loved, 
see what she saw, understand what she understood, and 
so be, as she was, filled with confidence and happiness. 
Not that she was happy at that moment; she, too, 

76 


VERA Cif 


was seriously upset, her face flushed, her eyes bright 
with effort to get Wemyss as she knew him, as he so 
simply was, through into her aunt’s consciousness, 
She had made her clean breast with a completeness 
that had included the confession that she did know 
what Mrs. Wemyss’s accident had been, and she had 
described it. Her aunt was painfully shocked. Any- 
thing so horrible as that hadn’t entered her mind. To 
fall past the very window her husband was sitting at 
. it seemed to her dreadful that Lucy should be 
mixed up in it, and mixed up so instantly on the death 
of her natural protector,—of her two natural protec- 
tors, for hadn’t Mrs. Wemyss as long as she existed also 
been one? She was bewildered, and couldn’t under- 
stand the violent reactions that Lucy appeared to look 
upon as so natural in Wemyss. She would have con- 
cluded that she didn’t understand because she was too 
old, because she was out of touch with the elasticities 
of the younger generation, but Wemyss must be very 
nearly as old as herself. Certainly he was of the same 
generation; and yet behold him, within a fortnight of 
his wife’s most shocking death, able to forget her, able 
to fall in love 
“But that’s why—that’s why,” Lucy cried when Miss 
Entwhistle said this. ‘He had to forget, or die himself. 
It was beyond what anybody could bear and stay 





sane——”’ 
“I’m sure I’m very glad he should stay sane,’ 
Miss Entwhistle, more and more puckered, “but I can’t 


> said 


78 VERA 


help wishing it hadn’t been you, Lucy, who are assisting 
him to stay it.” ° 

And then she repeated what at intervals she had 
kept on repeating with a kind of stubborn helplessness, 
that her quarrel with Mr. Wemyss was that he had got 
happy so very quickly. 

“Those grey trousers,’ she murmured. 

No; Miss Entwhistle couldn’t get over it. She 
couldn’t understand it. And Lucy, expounding and 
defending Wemyss in the middle of the room with all 
the blaze and emotion of what was only too evidently 
genuine love, was to her aunt an astonishing sight. 
That little thing, defending that enormous man. Jim’s 
daughter; Jim’s cherished little daughter... . 

Miss Entwhistle, sitting in her chair, struggled 
among other struggles to be fair, and reminded herself 
that Mr. Wemyss had proved himself to be most kind 
and eager to help down in Cornwall,—though even on 
this there was shed a new and disturbing light, and 
that now that she knew everything, and the doubts that 
had made her perhaps be a little unjust were out of the 
way and she could begin to consider him impartially, 


5 


she would probably very soon become sincerely attached 
to him. She hoped so with all her heart. She was used 
to being attached to people. It was normal to her to 
like and be liked. And there must be something more 
in him than his fine appearance for Lucy to be so very 
fond of him. 

She gave herself a shake. She told herself she was 
taking this thing badly; that she ought not, just be 


VERA %9 


cause it was an unusual situation, be so ready to 
condemn it. Was she really only a_ conventional 
spinster, shrinking back shocked at a touch of naked 
naturalness? Wasn’t there much in what that short- 
haired child was so passionately saying about the 
rightness, the saneness, of reaction from horror? 
Wasn’t it nature’s own protection against too much 
death? After all, what was the good of doubling 
horror, of being so much horrified at the horrible that 
you stayed rooted there and couldn’t move, and became, 
with your starting eyes and bristling hair, a horror 
yourself? 

Better, of course, to pass on, as Lucy was explaining, 
to get on with one’s business, which wasn’t death but 
life. Still—there were the decencies. However desolate 
one would be in retirement, however much one would 
suffer, there was. a period, Miss Entwhistle felt, during 
which the bereaved withdrew. Instinctively. The really 
bereaved would want to withdraw 





“Ah, but don’t you see,” Lucy once more tried 
despairingly to explain, “this wasn’t just being be- 
reaved—this was something simply too awful. Of 
course Everard would have behaved in the ordinary 
way if it had been an ordinary death.” 

“So that the more terrible one’s sorrow the more 
cheerfully one goes out to tea,” said Miss Entwhistle, 
the remembrance of the light trousers at one end of 
Wemyss and the unmistakably satisfied face at the 
other being for a moment too much for her. 


80 VERA 


“Oh,” almost moaned Lucy at that, and her head 
drooped in a sudden fatigue. 

Miss Entwhistle got up quickly and put her arms 
round her, “Forgive me,” she said. ‘That was just 
stupid and cruel, I think I’m hide-bound. I think 
I’ve probably got into a rut. Help me out of it, Lucy. 


99 





You shall teach me to take heroic views 

And she kissed her hot face tenderly, holding it close 
to her own. 

“But if I could only make you see,” said Lucy, 
clinging to her, tears in her voice. 

“But I do see that you love him very much,” said 
Miss Entwhistle gently, again very tenderly kissing her. 

That afternoon when Wemyss appeared at five 
o’clock, it being his bi-weekly day for calling, he found 
Lucy alone. 

“Why, where——-? How 
round the drawing-room as though Miss Entwhistle 
must be lurking behind a chair. 

“T’ve told,” said Lucy, who looked tired. 

Then he clasped her with a great hug to his heart. 
“Everard’s own little love,” he said, kissing and kissing 
her. ‘Everard’s own good little love.’ 

“Yes, but 
ever, so much muffled and engulfed that her voice didn’t 





?? he asked, peeping 





”? began Lucy faintly. She was, how- 


get through. 

“Now wasn’t I right?” he said triumphantly, holding 
her tight. “Isn’t this as it should be? Just you and 
me, and nobody to watch or interfere?” 

“Yes, but ” began Lucy again. 





VERA 81 


“What do you say? ‘Yes, but??” laughed Wemyss, 
bending his ear. ‘Yes without any but, you precious 
little thing. Buts don’t exist for us—only yeses.” 

And on these lines the interview continued for quite 
a long time before Lucy succeeded in telling him that 
her aunt had been much upset. 

Wemyss minded that so little that he didn’t even ask 
why. He was completely incurious about anything her 
aunt might think. ‘‘Who cares?” he said, drawing 
her to his heart again. ‘‘Who cares? We’ve got each 
other. What does anything else matter? If you had 
fifty aunts, all being upset, what would it matter? 
What can it matter to us?” 

And Lucy, who was exhausted by her morning, felt 
too as she nestled close to him that nothing did matter 
so long as he was there. But the difficulty was that he 
wasn’t there most of the time, and her aunt was, and she 
loved her aunt and did very much hate that she should 
be upset. 

She tried to convey this to Wemyss, but he didn’t 
understand. When it came to Miss Entwhistle he 
was as unable to understand Lucy as Miss Entwhistle 
was unable to understand her when it came to Wemyss. 
Only Wemyss didn’t in the least mind not understand- 
ing. Aunts. What were they? Insects. He laughed, 
and said his little love couldn’t have it both ways; she 
couldn’t eat her cake, which was her Everard, and have 
it too, which was her aunt; and he kissed her hair and 
asked who was a complicated little baby, and rocked 

her gently to and fro in his arms, and Lucy was amused 


82 VERA 


at that and laughed too, and forgot her aunt, and 
forgot everything except how much she loved him. 

Meanwhile Miss Entwhistle was spending a diligent 
afternoon in the newspaper room of the British Mu- 
seum. She was reading the Times report of the 
Wemyss accident and inquest; and if she had been 
upset by what Lucy told her in the morning she was 
even more upset by what she read in the afternoon. 
Lucy hadn’t mentioned that suggestion of suicide. 
Perhaps he hadn’t told her. Suicide. Well, there had 
been no evidence. There was an open verdict. It had 
been a suggestion made by a servant, perhaps a 
servant with a grudge. And even if it had been true, 
probably the poor creature had discovered she had some 
incurable disease, or she may have had some loss that 
broke her down temporarily, and—oh, there were many 
explanations; respectable, ordinary explanations, 

Miss Entwhistle walked home slowly, loitering at 
shop windows, staring at hats and blouses that she 
never saw, spinning out her walk to its utmost, trying 
to think. Suicide. How desolate it sounded on that 
beautiful afternoon. Such a giving up. Such a defeat. 
Why should she have given up? Why should she have 
been defeated? But it wasn’t true. The coroner had 
said there was no evidence to show how she came by 
her death. 

Miss Entwhistle walked slower and slower. The 
nearer she got to Eaton Terrace the more unwillingly 
did she advance. When she reached Belgrave Square 
she went right round it twice, lingering at the garden 


VERA 83 


railings studying the habits of birds. She had been out 
all the afternoon, and, as those who have walked it 
know, it is a long way from the British Museum to 
Eaton Terrace. Also it was a hot day and her feet 
ached, and she very much would have liked to be in her 
own chair in her cool drawing-room having her tea. 
But there in that drawing-room would probably still 
be Mr. Wemyss, no longer now to be Mr. Wemyss for 
her—would she really have to call him Everard?—or 
she might meet him on the stairs—narrow stairs; or 
in the hall—also narrow, which he would fill up; or on 
her doorstep she might meet him, filling up her door- 
step; or, when she turned the corner into her street, 
there, coming towards her, might be the triumphant 
trousers. 

No, she felt she couldn’t stand seeing him that day. 
So she lingered forlornly watching the sparrows inside 
the garden railings of Belgrave Square, balancing first’ 
on one and then on the other of those feet that ached. 

This was only the beginning, she thought; this was 
only the first of many days for her of wandering home- 
lessly round. Her house was too small to hold both 
herself and love-making. If it had been the slender 
love-making of the young man who was so doggedly 
devoted to Lucy, she felt it wouldn’t have been too 
small. He would have made love youthfully, shyly. 
She could have sat quite happily in the dining-room 
while the suitably paired young people dallied delicately 
together overhead. But she couldn’t bear the thought 
of being cramped up so near Mr. Wemyss’s—no, 


84 VERA 


Everard’s; she had better get used to that at once— 
lovemaking. His way of courting wouldn’t be,—she 
searched about in her uneasy mind for a word, and 
found vegetarian. Yes; that word sufficiently indicated 
what she meant: it wouldn’t be vegetarian. 

Miss Entwhistle drifted away from the railings, and 
turning her back on her own direction wandered to- 
wards Sloane Street. There she saw an omnibus 
stopping to let some one out. Wanting very much to 
sit down she made an effort and caught it, and squeez- 
ing herself into its vacant seat gave herself up to where- 
ever it should take her. 

It took her to the City; first to the City, and then 
to strange places beyond. She let it take her. Her 
clothes became steadily more fashionable the farther the 
omnibus went. She ended by being conspicuous and 
stared at. But she was determined to give the widest 
margin to the love-making and go the whole day, and 
she did. 

For an hour and a half the omnibus went on and on. 
She had no idea omnibuses did such things. When 
it finally stopped she sat still; and the conductor, who 
had gradually come to share the growing surprise of 
the relays of increasingly poor passengers, asked her 
what address she wanted. 

She said she wanted Sloane Street. 

He was unable to believe it, and tried to reason with 
her, but she sat firm in her place and persisted. 

At nine o’clock he put her down where he had taken 
her up. She disappeared into the darkness with the 


VERA 85 


movements of one who is stiff, and he winked at the 
passenger nearest the door and touched his forehead. 

But as she climbed wearily and hungrily up her steps 
and let herself in with her latchkey, she felt it had been 
well worth it; for that one day at least she had escaped 
Mr. We—— no, Everard. 


xX 


ISS ENTWHISTLE, however, made up her 
M mind very firmly that after this one after- 

noon of giving herself up to her feelings she 
was going to behave in the only way that is wise when 
faced by an inevitable marriage, the way of sympathy 
and friendliness, 

Too often had she seen the first indignation of dis- 
appointed parents at the marriage of their children 
harden into a matter of pride, a matter of doggedness 
and principle, and finally become an attitude unable to 
be altered, long after years had made it ridiculous. If 
the marriages turned out happy, how absurd to persist 
in an antiquated disapproval; if they turned out 
wretched, then how urgent the special need for love. 

Thus Miss Entwhistle reasoned that first sleepless 
night in bed, and on these lines she proceeded during 
the next few months. They were trying months. She 
used up all she had of gallantry in sticking to her deter- 
mination. lLucy’s instinct. had been sound, that wish 
to keep her engagement secret from her aunt for as 
long as possible. Miss Entwhistle, always thin, grew 
still more thin in her constant daily and hourly struggle 
to be pleased, to enter into Lucy’s happiness, to make 
things easy for her, to protect her from the notice and 

86 


VERA 87 


inquiry of their friends, to look hopefully and with as 
much of Lucy’s eyes as she could at Everard and at 
the future. 

“She isn’t simple enough,” Wemyss would say to 
Lucy if ever she said anything about her aunt’s increas- 
ing appearance of strain and overwork. “She should 
take things more naturally. Look at us.”’ For it was 
the one fly in Lucy’s otherwise perfect ointment, this 
intermittent consciousness that her aunt wasn’t alto- 
gether happy. 

And then he would ask her, laying his head on hers 
as he stood with his arms about her, who had taught 
his little girl to be simple; and they would laugh, and 
kiss, and talk of other things. 

Miss Entwhistle was unable to be simple in Wemyss’s 
sense. She tried to; for when she saw his fresh, un- 
lined face, his forehead without a wrinkle on it, and 
compared it in the glass with her own which was only 
three years older, she thought there must be a good 
deal to be said for single-mindedness. It was Lucy 
who told her Everard was so single-minded. He took 
one thing at a time, concentrating quietly, she said. 
When he had completely finished it off, then, and not 
till then, he went on to the next. He knew his own 
mind. Didn’t Aunt Dot think it was a great thing to 
know one’s own mind? Instead of wobbling about, 
wasting one’s thoughts and energies on side-shows? 

This was the very language of Wemyss; and Miss 
Entwhistle, after having been listening to him in the 
afternoon—for every time he came she put in a brief 


88 VERA 


appearance, just for the look of the thing, and on the 
Saturday and Sunday outings she was invariably 
present the whole time—felt it a little hard that when 
at last she had reached the end of the day and the 
harbour of her empty drawing-room she should, through 
the mouth of Lucy, have to listen to him all the evening 
as well, 

But she always agreed, and said Yes, he was a great 
dear; for when an only and much-loved niece is cer- 
tainly going to marry, the least a wise aunt can call her 
future nephew is a great dear. She will make this 
warmer and more varied if she can, but at least she 
will say that much. Miss Entwhistle tried to think of 
variations, afraid Lucy might notice a certain same- 
ness, and once with an effort she faltered out that he 
seemed to be a—a real darling; but it had a hollow 
sound, and she didn’t repeat it. Besides, Lucy was 
quite satisfied with the other. 

She used, sittmg at her aunt’s feet in the evenings— 
Wemyss never came in the evenings because he dis- 
trusted the probable dinner—sometimes to make her 
aunt say it again, by asking a little anxiously, “But 
you do think him a great dear, don’t you, Aunt Dot?” 
Whereupon Miss Entwhistle, afraid her last expression 
of that opinion may have been absent-minded, would 
hastily exclaim with almost excess of emphasis, “Oh, 
a great dear.” 

Perhaps he was a dear. She didn’t know. What 
had she against him? She didn’t know. He was too 
old, that was one thing; but the next minute, after 


VERA 89 


hearing something he had said or laughed at, she 
thought he wasn’t old enough. Of course what she 
really had against him was that he had got over his 
wife’s shocking death so quickly. Yet she admitted 
there was much in Lucy’s explanation of this as a sheer 
instinctive gesture of self-defence. Besides, she couldn’t 
keep it up as a grudge against him for ever; with every 
day it mattered less. And sometimes Miss Entwhistle 
even doubted whether it was this that mattered to her 
at all,—whether it was not rather some quite small 
things that she really objected to: a want of fastidious- 
ness, for instance, a forgetfulness of the minor cour- 
tesies,—the objections, in a word, she told herself, 
smiling, of an old maid. Lucy seemed not to mind his 
blunders in these directions in the least. She seemed 
positively, thought her aunt, to take a kind of pride in 
them, delighting in everything he said or did with the 
adoring tenderness of a young mother watching the 
pranks of her first-born. She laughed gaily; she let 
him caress her openly. She too, thought Miss Ent- 
whistle, had become what she no doubt would say was 
single-minded. Well, perhaps all this was a spinster’s 
way of feeling about a type not previously met with, 
and she had got—again she reproached herself—into 
an elderly groove. Jim’s friends,—well, they had been 
different, but not necessarily better. Mr. Wemyss 
would call them, she was sure, a finnicking lot. 

When in October London began to fill again, and 
Jim’s friends came to look her and Lucy up and showed 
a tendency, many of them, to keep on doing it, a new 


90 VERA 


struggle was added to her others, the struggle to pre- 
vent their meeting Wemyss. He wouldn’t, she was 
convinced, be able to hide his proprietorship in Lucy, 
and Lucy wouldn’t ever get that look of tenderness out 
of her eyes when they rested on him. Questions as to 
who he was would naturally be asked, and one or other 
of Jim’s friends would be sure to remember the affair 
of Mrs. Wemyss’s death; indeed, that day she went 
to the British Museum and read the report of it she had 
been amazed that she hadn’t seen it at the time. It 
took up so much of the paper that she was bound to 
have seen it if she had seen a paper at all. She could 
only suppose that as she was visiting friends just then, 
she chanced that day to have been in the act of leaving 
or arriving, and that if she bought a paper on the 
journey she had looked, as was sometimes her way in 
trains, not at it but out of the window. 

She felt she hadn’t the strength to support being 
questioned, and in her turn have to embark on the 
explanation and defence of Wemyss. ‘There was too 
much of him, she felt, to be explained. He ought to be 
separated into sections, and taken gradually and bit 
by bit,—but far best not to produce him, to keep him 
from meeting her friends. She therefore arranged a 
day in the week when she would be at home, and dis- 
couraged every one from the waste of time of trying to 
call on her on other days. Then presently the after- 
noon became an evening once a week, when whoever 
liked could come in after dinner and talk and drink 
coffee, because the evening was safer; made safe by 


VERA Po OT 


Wemyss’s conviction—he hadn’t concealed it—that the 
dinners of maiden ladies were notoriously both scanty 
and bad. 

Lucy would have preferred never to see a soul except 
Wemyss, who was all she wanted, all she asked for in 
life; but she did see her aunt’s point, that only by 
pinning their friends to a day and an hour could the 
risk of their overflowing into precious moments be 
avoided. This is how Miss Entwhistle put it to her, 
wondering as she said it at her own growing ability in 
artfulness. 

She had an old friend living in Chesham Street, a 
widow full of that ripe wisdom that sometimes comes 
at the end to those who have survived marriage; and 
to her, when the autumn brought her back to London, 
Miss Entwhistle went occasionally in search of comfort. 

“What in the whole world puts such a gulf between 
two affections and comprehensions as a new love?” 
she asked one day, freshly struck, because of something 
Lucy had said, by the distance she had travelled. Lucy 
was quite a tiny figure now, so far away from her had 
she moved; she couldn’t even get her voice to carry 
to her, much less still hold on to her with her hands. 

And the friend, made brief of speech by wisdom, 
said: “Nothing.” 

About Wemyss’s financial position Miss Entwhistle 
could only judge from appearances, for it wouldn’t 
have occurred to him that it might perhaps be her 
concern to know, and she preferred to wait till later, 
when the engagement could be talked about, to ask 


92 VERA 


some old friend of Jim’s to make the proper inquiries ; 
but from the way he lived it seemed to be an easy one. 
He went freely in taxis, he hired cars with reasonable 
frequency, he inhabited one of the substantial houses 
of Lancaster Gate, and also, of course, he had The 
Willows, the house on the river near Strorley where 
his wife had died. After all, what could be better than 
two houses, Miss Entwhistle thought, congratulating 
herself, as it were, on Lucy’s behalf that this side of 
Wemyss was so satisfactory. ‘Two houses, and no 
children; how much better than the other way about. 
And one day, feeling almost hopeful about Lucy’s pros- 
pects, on the advantages of which she had insisted that 
her mind should dwell, she went round again to the 
widow in Chesham Street and said suddenly to her, who 
was accustomed to these completely irrelevant ex- 
clamatory inquiries from her friend, and who being 
wise was also incurious, ‘‘What can be better than two 
houses ?” 

To which the widow, whose wisdom was more ripe 
than comforting, replied disappointingly: “One.” 

Later, when the marriage loomed very near, Miss 
Entwhistle, who found that she was more than ever in 
need of reassurance instead of being, as she had hoped 
to become, more reconciled, went again, in a kind of 
desperation this time, to the widow, seeking some word 
from her who was so wise that would restore her to 
tranquillity, that would dispel her absurd persistent 
doubts. ‘“‘After all,” she said almost entreatingly, 
“what can be better than a devoted husband?” 


Ae RO ead, 


VERA 93 


And the widow, who had had three and knew what 
she was talking about, replied with the large calm of 


those who have finished and can in leisure weigh and 
reckon up: “None.” 


XI 


HE Wemyss-Entwhistle engagement proceeded 
on its way of development through the ordi- 
nary stages of all engagements: secrecy 
complete, secrecy partial, semi-publicity, and imme- 
diately after that entire publicity, with its inevitable 
accompanying uproar. The uproar, always more or 
less audible to the protagonists, of either approval or 
disapproval, was in this case one of unanimous dis- 
approval. Lucy’s father’s friends protested to a man. 
The atmosphere at Eaton Terrace was convulsed; and 
Lucy, running as she always did to hide from every- 
thing upsetting into Wemyss’s arms, was only made 
more certain than ever that there alone was peace. 
This left Miss Entwhistle to face the protests by 
herself. There was nothing for it but to face them. 
Jim had had so many intimate, devoted friends, and 
each of them apparently regarded his daughter as his 
special care and concern. One or two of the younger 
ones, who had been disciples rather than friends, were 
in love with her themselves, and these were specially 
indignant and vocal in their indignation. Miss Ent- 
whistle found herself in the position she had tried so 
hard to avoid, that of defending and explaining 
Wemyss to a highly sceptical, antagonistic audience. 
94 


VERA 95 


It was as if, forced to fight for him, she was doing so 
with her back to her drawing-room wall. 

Lucy couldn’t help her, because though she was dis- 
tressed that her aunt should be being worried because 
of her affairs, yet she did feel that Everard was right 
when he said that her affairs concerned nobody in the 
world but herself and him. She, too, was indignant, 
but her indignation was because her father’s friends, 
who had been ever since she could remember always 
good and kind, besides perfectly intelligent and reason- 
able, should with one accord, and without knowing 
anything about Everard except that story of the 
accident, be hostile to her marrying him. The ready 
unfairness, the willingness immediately to believe the 
worst instead of the best, astonished and shocked her. 
And then the way they all talked! Everlasting argu- 
ments and reasoning and hairsplitting; so clever, so 
impossible to stand up against, and yet so surely, she 
was certain, if only she had been clever too and able to 
prove things, wrong. All their multitudinous points of 
view,—why, there was only one point of view about a 
thing, Everard said, and that was the right one. Ah, 
but what a woman wanted wasn’t this; she didn’t want 
this endless thinking and examining and dissecting and 
considering. A woman—her very thoughts were now 
dressed in Wemyss’s words—only wanted her man. 
«Hers not to reason why,’ ’’ Wemyss had quoted one 
day, and both of them had laughed at his parody, 
“ ‘hers but to love and—not die, but live.’ ” 

The most that could be said for her father’s friends 


96 VERA 


was that they meant well; but oh, what trouble the 
well-meaning could bring into an otherwise simple 
situation! From them she hid—it was inevitable—in 
Wemyss’s arms. Here were no arguments; here were 
no misgivings and paralysing hesitations. Here was 
just simple love, and the feeling—delicious to her whose 
mother had died in the very middle of all the sweet 
early petting, and whose whole life since had been spent 
entirely in the dry and bracing company of unusually 
inquisitive-minded, clever men—of being a baby again 
in somebody’s big, comfortable, uncritical lap. 

The engagement hadn’t leaked out so much as 
flooded out. It would have continued secret for quite 
a long time, known only to the three and to the maids 
—who being young women themselves, and well ac- 
quainted with the symptoms of the condition, were 
sure of it before Miss Entwhistle had even begun to 
suspect,—if Wemyss hadn’t taken to dropping in, 
contrary to expectations, on the Thursday evenings. 
Lucy’s descriptions of these evenings and of the people 
who came, and of how very kind they were to her aunt 
and herself, and how anxious they were to help her, 
they of course supposing that she was, actually, the 
lonely thing she would have been if she hadn’t had 
Everard as the dear hidden background to her life—at 
this point they embraced,—at first amused him, then 
made him curious, and finally caused him to come and 
see for himself. | 

He didn’t tell Lucy he was coming, he just came. 
It had taken him five Thursday evenings of playing 


VERA 97 


bridge as usual at his club, playing it with one hand, 
as he said to her afterwards, and thinking of her with 
the other—“you know what I mean,” he said, and they 
laughed and embraced—before it slowly oozed into and 
pervaded his mind that there was his little girl, sur- 
rounded by people fussing over her and making love to 
her (because, said Wemyss, everybody would naturally 
want to make love to her), and there was he, the only 
person who had a right to do this, somewhere else. 

So he walked in; and when he walked in, the group 
standing round Lucy with their backs to the door saw 
her face, which had been gently attentive, suddenly flash 
into colour and light; and turning with one accord to 
see what it was she was looking at behind them with 
parted lips and eyes of startled joy, beheld once more 
the unknown chief mourner of the funeral in Cornwall. 

Down there they had taken for granted that he was 
a relation of Jim’s, the kind of relative who in a man’s 
life appears only three times, the last of which is his 
funeral; here in Eaton Terrace they were immediately 
sure he was not, anyhow, that, because for relatives 
who only appear those three times a girl’s face doesn’t 
change in a flash from gentle politeness to tremulous, 
shining life. They all stared at him astonished. He 
was so different from the sorts of people they had met 
at Jim’s. For one thing he was so well dressed,—in 
the mating season, thought Miss Entwhistle, even birds 
dress well—and in his impressive evening clothes, with 
what seemed a bigger and more spotless shirt-front 
than any shirt-front they could have imagined, he made 


98 VERA 


them look and feel what they actually were, a dingy, 
shabby lot. 

Wemyss was good-looking. He might be middle- 
aged, but he was good-looking enough frequently to 
eclipse the young. He might have a little too much of 
what tailors call a fine presence, but his height carried 
this off. His features were regular, his face care-free 
and healthy, his brown hair sleek with no grey in it, 
he was clean-shaven, and his mouth was the kind of 
mouth sometimes described by journalists as mobile, 
sometimes as determined, but always as well cut. One 
could visualise him in a fur-lined coat, thought a young 
man near Lucy, considering him; and one couldn’t 
visualise a single one of the others, including himself, 
in the room that evening in a fur-lined coat. Also, 
thought this same young man, one could see railway 
porters and taxi-drivers and waiters hurrying to be of 
service to him; and one not only couldn’t imagine them 
taking any notice that wasn’t languid and reluctant of 
the others, including himself, but one knew from per- 
sonal distressing experience that they didn’t. 

“My splendid lover!” Lucy’s heart cried out within 
her when the door opened and there he stood. She 
had not seen him before in the evening, and the contrast 
between him and the rest of the people there was really 
striking. 

Miss Entwhistle had been right: there was no hiding 
the look in Lucy’s eyes or Wemyss’s proprietary man- 
ner. He hadn’t meant to take any but the barest notice 
of his little girl, he had meant to be quite an ordinary 


VERA 99 


guest—just shake hands and say, “Hasn’t it been wet 
to-day?”—that sort of thing; but his pride and love 
were too much for him, he couldn’t hide them. He 
thought he did, and was sure he was behaving beautiful- 
ly and with the easiest unconcern, but the mere way he 
looked at her and stood over her was enough. Also there 
was the way she looked at him. The intelligences in 
that room were used to drawing more complicated in- 
ferences than this. They were outraged by its obvious- 
ness. Who was this middle-aged, prosperous outsider 
who had got hold of Jim’s daughter? What had her 
aunt been about? Where had he dropped from? Had 
Jim known? 

Miss Entwhistle introduced him. “Mr. Wemyss,” 
she said to them generally, with a vague wave of her 
hand; and a red spot appeared and stayed on each of 
her cheekbones. 

Wemyss held forth. He stood on the hearthrug 
filling his pipe—he was used to smoking in that room 
when he came to tea with Lucy, and forgot to ask Miss 
Entwhistle if it mattered—and told everybody what 
he thought. They were talking about Ireland when he 
came in, and after the disturbance of his arrival had 
subsided he asked them not to mind him but to go on. 
He then proceeded to go on himself, telling them what 
he thought; and what he thought was what the Times 
had thought that morning. Wemyss spoke with the 
practised fluency of a leading article. He liked politics 
and constantly talked them at his club, and it created 
vacancies in the chairs near him. But Lucy, who 


100 VERA 


hadn’t heard him on politics before and found that she 
could understand every word, listened to him with 
parted lips. Before he came in they had been saying 
things beyond her quickness in following, eagerly 
discussing Sinn Fein, Lloyd George, the outrageous 
cost of living—it was the autumn of 1920—turning 
everything inside out, upside down, being witty, being 
surprising, being tremendously eager and earnest. It 
had been a kind of restless flashing round and catching 
fire from each other,—a kind of kick, and flick, and 
sparks, and a burst of laughter, and then on to some- 
thing else just as she was laboriously getting under way 
to follow the last sentence but six. She had been 
missing her father, who took her by the hand on these 
occasions when he saw her lagging behind, and stopped 
a moment to explain to her, and held up the others 
while she got her breath. 

But now came Everard, and in a minute everything 
was plain. He had the effect on her of a window being 
thrown open and fresh air and sunlight being let in. 
He was so sensible, she felt, compared to these others; 
so healthy and natural. The Government, he said, 
only had to do this and that, and Ireland and the cost 
of living would immediately, regarded as problems, be 
solved. He explained the line to be taken. It was a 
very simple line. One only needed goodwill and a 
little common sense. Why, thought Lucy, uncon- 
sciously nodding proud agreement, didn’t people have 
goodwill and a little common sense? 

At first there was a disposition to interrupt, to 


VERA 101 


heckle, but it grew fainter and soon gave way to 
complete silence. The other guests might have been 
stunned, Miss Entwhistle thought, so motionless did 
they presently sit. And when they went away, which 
they seemed to do earlier than usual and in a body, 
Wemyss was still standing on the hearthrug explaining 
the points of view of the ordinary, sensible business 
man. 

“Mind you,” he said, pointing at them with his pipe, 
“I don’t pretend to be a great thinker. [T’m just a 
plain business man, and as a plain business man I know 
there’s only one way of doing a thing, and that’s the 
right way. Find out what that way is, and go and do 
it. There’s too much arguing altogether and asking 
other people what they think. We don’t want talk, 
we want action. I agree with Napoleon, who said 
concerning the French Revolution, ‘Jl aurait fallu 
mitrailler cette canaille. We’re not simple enough.” 

This was the last the others heard as they trooped 
in silence down the stairs. Outside they lingered for a 
while in little knots on the pavement talking, and then 
they drifted away to their various homes, where most 
of them spent the rest of the evening writing to Miss 
Entwhistle. 

The following Thursday evening, her letters in reply 
having been vague and evasive, they came again, each 
hoping to get Lucy’s aunt to himself, and on the ground 
of being Jim’s most devoted friend ask her straight 
questions such as who and what was Wemyss. Also- 
more particularly, why. Who and what he was was of 


102 VERA 


no sort of consequence if he would only be and do it 
somewhere else; but they arrived determined to get 
an answer to the third question: Why Wemyss? And 
when they got there, there he was again; there before 
them this time, standing on the hearthrug as if he had 
never moved off it since the week before and had gone 
on talking ever since. 

This was the end of the Thursday evenings. The 
next one was unattended, except by Wemyss; but Miss 
Entwhistle had been forced to admit the engagement, 
and from then on right up to the marriage her life was 
a curse to her and a confusion. Just because Jim had 
appointed no guardian in his will for Lucy, every 
single one of his friends felt bound to fill the vacancy. 
They were indignant when they discovered that almost 
before they had begun Lucy was being carried off, but 
they were horrified when they discovered what Wemyss 
it was who was carrying her off. Most of them quite 
well remembered the affair of Mrs. Wemyss’s death a 
few weeks before, and those who did not went, as Miss 
Entwhistle had gone, to the British Museum and read 
it up. They also, though they themselves were chiefly 
unworldly persons who lost money rather than made it, 
instituted the most searching private inquiries into 
Wemyss’s business affairs, hoping that he might be 
caught out as such a rascal or so penniless, or, prefer- 
ably, both, that no woman could possibly have anything 
to do with him. But Wemyss’s business record, the 
solicitor they employed informed them, was quite 
creditable. Everything about it was neat and in order. 


VERA 103 


He was not what the City would call a wealthy man, 
but if you went out say to Ealing, said the solicitor, 
he would be called wealthy. He was solid, and he was | 
certainly more than able to support a wife and family. 
He could have been quite wealthy if he had not adopted 
a principle to which he had adhered for years of 
knocking off work early and _ leaving his office at an 
hour when other men did not,—the friends were obliged 
to admit that this, at least, seemed sensible. There 
had been, though, a very sad occurrence recently in his 
private life-—‘‘Oh, thank you,” interrupted the friends, 
“‘we have heard about that.” 

But however good Wemyss’s business record might 
be, it couldn’t alter their violent objection to Jim’s 
daughter marrying him. Apart from the stuff he 
talked, there was the inquest. They were aware that in 
this they were unreasonable, but they were all too much 
attached to Jim’s memory to be able to be reasonable 
about a man they felt so certain he wouldn’t have hked. 
Singly and in groups they came at safe times such 
as after breakfast to Eaton Terrace to reason with 
Lucy, too much worried to remember that you cannot 
reason with a person in love. Less wise than Miss 
Entwhistle, they tried to dissuade her from marrying 
this man, and the more they tried the tighter she clung 
to him. To the passion of love was added, by their 
attitudes, the passion of protectiveness, of flinging her 
body between him and them. And all the while, right 
inside her innermost soul, in spite of her amazement 
at them and her indignation, she was smiling to herself ; 


104 VERA 


for it was really very funny, the superficial judgments 
of these clever people when set side by side with what 
she alone knew,—the tenderness, the simple goodness 
of her heart’s beloved. 

Lucy laughed to herself in her happy sureness. She 
had miraculously found not only a lover she could adore 
and a guide she could follow and a teacher she could 
look up to and a sufferer who without her wouldn’t 
have been healed, but a mother, a nurse, and a play- 
mate. In spite of his being so much older and so 
extraordinarily wise, he was yet her contemporary,— 
sometimes hardly even that, so boyish was he in his 
talk and jokes, Lucy had never had a playmate. She 
had spent her life sitting, as it were, bolt upright 
mentally behaving, and she hadn’t known till Wemyss 
came on the scene how delicious it was to relax. 
Nonsense had delighted her father, it is true, but it 
had to be of a certain kind; never the kind to which 
the adjective “sheer” would apply. With Wemyss she 
could say whatever nonsense came into her head, sheer 
or otherwise. He laughed consumedly at her when she 
talked it. She loved to make him laugh. They laughed 
together. He understood her language. He was her 
playmate. Those people outside, old and young, who 
didn’t know what playing was and were trying to get 
her away from him, might beat at the door behind 
which he and she sat listening amused as long as they 
liked. 

“How they all try to separate us,” she said to him 


VERA 105 


one day, sitting as usual safe in the circle of his arm, 
her head on his breast. 

“You can’t separate unity,’ remarked Wemyss 
comfortably. 

She wanted to tell them that answer, confront them 
with it next time they came after breakfast, as a dis- 
couragement to useless further effort, but she had 
learned that they somehow always knew when what she 
said was Everard’s and not hers, and then, of course, 
prejudiced as they were, they wouldn’t listen. 

“Now, Lucy, that’s pure Wemyss,” they would say. 
“For heaven’s sake say something of your own.” 

At Christmas Wemyss had an encounter with Miss 
Entwhistle, who ever since she had been told of the 
engagement had been so quiet and inoffensive that he 
quite liked her. She had seemed to recognise her 
position as a side-show, and had accepted it without 
a word. She no longer asked him questions, and she 
made no difficulties. She left him alone with Lucy in 
Eaton Terrace, and though she had to go with them on 
the outings she asserted herself so little that he forgot 
she was there. But when towards the middle of 
December he remarked one afternoon that he always 
spent Christmas at The Willows, and what day would 
she and Lucy come down, Christmas Eve or the day 
before, to his astonishment she looked astonished, and 
after a silence said it was most kind of him, but they 
were going to spend Christmas where they were. 

“T had hoped you would join us,” she said. “Must 
you really go away?” 


106 VERA 


“But 
his ears. 

It was, however, the fact that Miss Entwhistle 
wouldn’t go to The Willows; and of course if she 
wouldn’t Lucy couldn’t either. Nothing that he said 
could shake her determination. Here was a repetition, 
only how much worse—fancy spoiling his Christmas— 
of her conduct in Cornwall when she insisted on going 
away from that nice little house where they were all 
so comfortably established, and taking Lucy up to 
London. He had forgotten, so acquiescent had she 
been for weeks, that down there he had discovered she 
was obstinate. It was a shock to him to realise that 
her obstinacy, the most obstinate obstinacy he had 
ever met, might be going to upset his plans. He 
couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe he wasn’t going 
to be able to have what he wished, and only because an 
old maid said “No.” Was the story of Balaam to be 
reversed, and the angel be held up by the donkey? He 
refused to believe such a thing possible. 

Wemyss, who made his plans first and talked about 
them afterwards, hadn’t mentioned Christmas even to 
Lucy. It was his habit to settle what he wished to do, 
arrange all the details, and then when everything was 
ready inform those who were to take part. It hadn’t 
occurred to him that over the Christmas question there 
would be trouble. He had naturally taken it for 
granted that he would spend Christmas with his little 
girl, and of course as he always spent it at The Willows 
she would spend it there too. All his arrangements 





*» began Wemyss, incredulous, doubting 


VERA 107 


were made, and the servants, who looked surprised, had 
been told to get the spare-rooms ready for two ladies. 
He had begun to feel seasonable as early as the first 
week in December, and had bespoken two big turkeys 
instead of one, because this was to be his first real 
Christmas at The Willows—Vera had been without the 
Christmas spirit—and he felt it couldn’t be celebrated 
lavishly enough. ‘Two where there had in previous 
years been one,—that was the turkeys; four where 
there had been two,—that was the plum puddings. He 
doubled everything. Doubling seemed the proper, even 
the symbolic expression of his feelings, for wasn’t he 
soon going to be doubled himself? And how sweetly. 

Then suddenly, having finished his preparations and 
proceeding, the time being ripe, to the question of the 
day of arrival, he found himself up against opposition. 
Miss Entwhistle wouldn’t go to The Willows—in- 
credible, impossible, and insufferable,—while Lucy, 
instead of instantly insisting and joining with him in 
a compelling majority, sat as quiet as a mouse. 

“But Lucy ”? Wemyss having stared speechless 
at her aunt, turned to her. ‘“‘But of course we must 
spend Christmas together.” 

“Oh yes,” said Lucy, leaning forward, “of 





39 





course 

“But of course you must come down. Why, any 
other arrangement is unthinkable. My house is in the 
country, which is the proper place for Christmas, and 
it’s your Everard’s house, and you haven’t seen it yet 


108 VERA 


—why, I would have taken you down long ago, but I’ve . 
been saving up for this.” 

“We hoped,” said Miss Entwhistle, ““you would join 
us here.” 

“Here! But there isn’t room to swing a turkey 
here. I’ve ordered two, and each of them is twice too 
big to get through your front door.” 

“Oh, Everard—have you actually ordered tur- 
keys?” said Lucy. 

She wanted to laugh, but she also wanted to cry. 
His simplicity was too wonderful. In her eyes it set 
him apart from criticism and made him sacred, like the 
nimbus about the head of a saint. 

That he should have been secretly busy making 
preparations, buying turkeys, planning a surprise, 
when all this time she had been supposing that why he 
never mentioned The Willows was because he shrank 
both for himself and for her from the house of his 
tragedy! There had never been any talk of showing 
it to her, as there had about the house in Lancaster 
Gate, and she had imagined he would never go near it 
again and was probably quietly getting rid of it. He 
would want to get rid of it, of course,—that house of 
unbearable memories. ‘To the other one, the house in 
Lancaster Gate, he had insisted on taking them to tea, 
and in spite of a great desire not to go plainly visible 
on her aunt’s face and felt too by herself, it had seemed 
after all a natural and more or less inevitable thing, 
and they had gone. At least that poor Vera had 
only lived there, and not died there. It was a gloomy 


VERA 109 


house, and Lucy had wanted him to give it up and start 
life with her in a place without associations, but he 
had been so much astonished at the idea—‘Why,” he 
had cried, “it was my father’s house and I was born in 
it!’—that she couldn’t help laughing at his dismay, 
and was ashamed of herself for having thought of 
uprooting him. Besides, she hadn’t known he had been 
born in it. 

The Willows, however, was different. Of that he 
never spoke, and Lucy had been sure of the pitiful, 
the delicate reason. Now it appeared that all this 
time he had just been saving it up as a Christmas 
treat. 

“Oh, Everard she said, with a gasp. She 
hadn’t reckoned with The Willows. That The Willows 
should still be in Everard’s life, and actively so, not 
just lingering on while house agents were disposing of 


199 





it, but visited and evidently prized, came upon her as 
an immense shock. 
“T think we can achieve a happy little Christmas for 


> said her aunt, smiling the smile she smiled 


you here,’ 
when she found difficulty in smiling. ‘“‘Of course you 
and Lucy would want to be together. I ought to have 
told you earlier that we were counting on you, but 
somehow Christmas comes on one so unexpectedly.” 
“Perhaps you'll tell me why you won’t come to The 
Willows,” said Wemyss, holding on to himself as she 
used to make him hold on to himself in Cornwall. 
“You realise, of course, that if you persist you spoil 


both Lucy’s and my Christmas.” 


110 VERA 


“Ah, but you mustn’t put it that way,” said Miss 
Entwhistle, gentle but determined. “I promise you 
that you and Lucy shall be very happy here.” 

“You haven’t answered my question,” said Wemyss, 
slowly filling his pipe. 

“T don’t think I’m going to,” said Miss Entwhistle, 
suddenly flaring up. She hadn’t flared up since she 
was ten, and was instantly ashamed of herself, but 
there was something about Mr. Wemyss 

“T think,” she said, getting up and speaking very 
gently, “‘you’ll like to be alone together now.” And she 
crossed to the door. 

There she wavered, and turning round said more 
gently still, even penitentially, “If Lucy wishes to go 
to The Willows PI—Tll accept your kind invitation 
and take her. I leave it to her.” 

Then she went out. 

“That’s all right then,” said Wemyss with a great 
sigh of relief, smiling broadly at Lucy. “Come here, 
little love.—come to your Everard, and we'll fix it all 
up. Lord, what a kill-joy that woman is!” 

And he put out his arms and drew her to him. 





XII 


UT Christmas was spent after all at Eaton 
Terrace, and they lived on Wemyss’s turkeys 


and plum pudding for a fortnight. 

It was not a very successful Christmas because 
Wemyss was so profoundly disappointed, and Miss 
Entwhistle had the apologeticness of those who try to 
make up for having got their own way, and Lucy, who 
had shrunk from The Willows far more than her aunt, 
wished many times before it was over that they had 
after all gone there. It would have been much simpler 
in the long run, and much less painful than having to 
look on at Everard being disappointed ; but at the time, 
and taken by surprise, she had felt that she couldn’t 
thave borne festivities, and still less could she have borne 
seeing Everard bearing festivities in that house. 

“This is morbid,” he said, when in answer to his 
questioning she at last told him it was poor Vera’s 
dreadful death there that made her feel she couldn’t 
go; and he explained, holding her in his arms, how 
foolish it was to be morbid and how his little girl, who 
was marrying a healthy, sensible man who, God knew, 
had had to fight hard enough to keep so—she pressed 
closer—and yet had succeeded, must be healthily 
sensible too. Otherwise, if she couldn’t do this and 

111 


112 VERA 


couldn’t do that because it reminded her of something 
sad, and couldn’t go here and couldn’t go there because 
of somebody’s having died, he was afraid she would 
make both herself and him very unhappy. 

“Oh, Everard ” said Lucy at that, holding him 
tight, the thought of making him unhappy, him, her 
own beloved who had been through such terrible un- 
happiness already, giving her heart a stab. 

His little girl must know, he continued, speaking 
with the grave voice that was natural to him when he 
was serious, the voice not of the playmate but of the 
man she adored, the man she was in love with, in whose 
hands she could safely leave her earthly concerns,— 
his little girl must know that somebody had died every- 
where. There wasn’t a spot, there wasn’t a house, 








except quite new ones 
“Oh yes, I know—but ” Lucy tried to interrupt. 
And The Willows was his home, the home he had 
looked forward to and worked for and had at last been 
able to afford to rent on a long lease, a lease so long 





that it made it practically his very own, and he had 
spent the last ten years developing and improving it, 
and there wasn’t a brick or a tree in it in which he 
didn’t take an interest, really an almost personal in- 
terest, and his one thought all these months had been 
the day when he would show it to her, to its dear future 
mistress. 





“Oh, Everard—yes—you shall—I want to sf 
said Lucy incoherently, her cheek against his, “only 


VERA 113 


not yet—not festivities—please—I won’t be so morbid 
—I promise not to be morbid—but—please——” 

And just when she was wavering, just when she was 
going to give in, not because of his reasoning, for her 
instincts were stronger than his reasoning, but because 
she couldn’t bear his disappointment, Miss Entwhistle, 
sure now of Lucy’s dread of Christmas at The Willows, 
suddenly turned firm again and announced that they 
would spend it in Eaton Terrace. 

So Wemyss was forced to submit. The sensation 
was so new to him that he couldn’t get over it. Once 
it was certain that his Christmas was, as he insisted, 
spoilt, he left off talking about it and went to the other 
extreme and was very quiet. That his little love should 
be so much under the influence of her aunt saddened 
him, he told her. Lucy tried to bring gaiety into this 
attitude by pointing out the proof she was giving him 
of how very submissive she was to the person she 
happened to live with,—‘‘And presently all my sub- 
missiveness will be concentrated on you,” she said gaily. 

But he wouldn’t be gay. He shook his head in 
silence and filled his pipe. He was too deeply dis- 
appointed to be able to cheer up. And the expression 
‘“Shappen to live with,” jarred a little. There was an 
airy carelessness about the phrase. One didn’t happen 
to live with one’s husband; yet that had been the 
implication. 

Every year in April Wemyss had a birthday; that 
is, unlike most people of his age, he regularly celebrated 
it. Christmas and his birthday were the festivals of 


114 VERA 


the year for him, and were always spent at The Wil- 
lows. He regarded his birthday, which was on the 4th 
of April, as the first day of spring, defying the cal- 
endar, and was accustomed to find certain yellow 
flowers in blossom down by the river on that date sup- 
porting his contention. If these flowers came out before 
his birthday he took no notice of them, treating them 
as non-existent, nor did he ever notice them afterwards, 
for he did not easily notice flowers; but his gardener 
had standing orders to have a bunch of them on the 
table that one morning in the year to welcome him with 
their bright shiny faces when he came down to his 
birthday breakfast, and coming in and seeing them he 
said, “My birthday and Spring’s’’; whereupon his wife 
—up to now it had been Vera, but from now it would 
be Lucy—kissed him and wished him many happy 
returns. This was the ritual; and when one year of 
abnormal cold the yellow flowers weren’t there at 
breakfast, because neither by the river’s edge nor in 
the most sheltered of the swamps had the increasingly 
frantic gardener been able to find them, the entire birth- 
day was dislocated. He couldn’t say on entering the 
room and beholding them, ‘“‘My birthday and Spring’s,” 
because he didn’t behold them; and his wife—that year 
Vera—couldn’t kiss him and wish him many happy re- 
turns because she hadn’t the cue. She was so much 
used to the cue that not having it made her forget her 
part,—forget, indeed, his birthday altogether; and 
consequently it was a day of the extremest spiritual 
chill and dinginess, matching the weather without. 


VERA 115 


Wemyss had been terribly hurt. He hoped never to 
spend another birthday like it. Nor did he, for Vera 
remembered it after that. 

Birthdays being so important to him, he naturally 
reflected after Miss Entwhistle had spoilt his Christmas 
that she would spoil his birthday too if he let her. Well, 
he wasn’t going to let her. Not twice would he be 
caught like that; not twice would he be caught in a 
position of helpfulness on his side and power on hers. 
The way to avoid it was very simple: he would marry 
Lucy in time for his birthday. Why should they wait 
any longer? Why stick to that absurd convention of 
the widower’s year? No sensible man minded what 
people thought. And who were the people? Surely 
one didn’t mind the opinions of those shabby weeds he 
had met on the two Thursday evenings at Lucy’s aunt’s. 
The little they had said had been so thoroughly un- 
sound and muddled and yet dangerous, that if they 
one and all emigrated to-morrow England would only 
be the better. After meeting them he had said to Lucy, 
who had listened in some wonder at this new light 
thrown on her father’s friends, that they were the very 
stuff of which successful segregation was made. In an 
island by themselves, he told her, they would be quite 
happy undermining each other’s backbones, and the 
backbone of England, which consisted of plain unspoilt 
patriots, would be let alone. They, certainly, didn’t 
matter; while as for his own friends, those friends who 
had behaved badly to him on Vera’s death, not only 
didn’t he care twopence for their criticisms but he could 


116 VERA 


hardly wait for the moment when he would confound 
them by producing for their inspection this sweetest 
of little girls, so young, so devoted to him, Lucy his 
wife. 

He accordingly proceeded to make all the necessary 
arrangements for being married in March, for going 
for a trip to Paris, and for returning to The Willows 
for the final few days of his honeymoon on the very 
day of his birthday. What a celebration that would 
be! Wemyss, thinking of it, shut his eyes so as to 
dwell upon it undisturbed. Never would he have had 
a birthday like this next one. He might really quite 
fairly call it his First, for he would be beginning life 
all over again, and entering on years that would indeed 
be truthfully described as tender. 

So much was it his habit to make plans privately 
and not mention them till they were complete, that he 
found it difficult to tell Lucy of this one in spite of the 
important part she was to play in it. But, after all, 
some preparing would, he admitted to himself, be 
necessary even for the secret marriage he had decided 
on at a registrar’s office. She would have to pack a 
bag; she would have to leave her belongings in order. 
Also he might perhaps have to use persuasion. He 
knew his little girl well enough to be sure she would 
relinquish church and white satin without a murmur at 
his request, but she might want to tell her aunt of the 
marriage’s imminence, and then the aunt would, to a 
dead certainty, obstruct, and either induce her to wait 
till the year was out, or, if Lucy refused to do this, 


VERA 117 


make her miserable with doubts as to whether she had 
been right to follow her lover’s wishes. Fancy making 
a girl miserable because she followed her lover’s wishes! 
What a woman, thought Wemyss, filling his pipe. In 
his eyes Miss Entwhistle had swollen since her conduct 
at Christmas to the bulk of-a monster. 

Having completed his preparations, and fixed his 
wedding day for the first Saturday in March, Wemyss 
thought it time he told Lucy; so he did, though not 
without a slight fear at the end that she might make 
difficulties. 

“My little love isn’t going to do anything that spoils 
her Everard’s plans after all the trouble he has taken?” 
he said, seeing that with her mouth slightly open she 
gazed at him in an obvious astonishment and didn’t 
say a word. 

He then proceeded to shut the eyes that were gazing 
up into his, and the surprised parted lips, with kisses, 
for he had discovered that gentle, lingering kisses 
hushed Lucy quiet when she was inclined to say, 
“But ” and brought her back quicker than any- 
thing to the mood of tender, half-asleep acquiescence 
in which, as she lay in his arms, he most loved her; then 
indeed she was his baby, the object of the passionate 
protectiveness he felt he was naturally filled with, but 
for the exercise of which circumstances up to now had 
given him no scope. You couldn’t passionately protect 
Vera. She was always in another room. 

Lucy, however, did say, “But 4 
covered from her first surprise, and did presently— 





when she re- 





118 VERA 


directly, that is, he left off kissing her and she could 
speak—make difficulties. Her aunt; the secrecy; why 
secrecy; why not wait; it was so necessary under the 
circumstances to wait. 

And then he explained about his birthday. 

At that she gazed at him again with a look of wonder 
in her eyes, and after a moment began to laugh. She 
laughed a great deal, and with her ann tight round his 
neck, but her eyes were wet. “Oh Everard,” she said, 
her cheek against his, “do you think we’re really old 
enough to marry?”’ 

This time, however, he got his way. Lucy found 
she couldn’t bring herself to spoil his plans a second 
time; the spectacle of his prolonged silent disappoint- 
ment at Christmas was still too vividly before her. 
Nor did she feel she could tell her aunt. She hadn’t 
the courage to face her aunt’s expostulations and final 
distressed giving in, Her aunt, who loomed so enor- 
mous in Wemyss’s eyes, seemed to Lucy to be only half 
the size she used to be. She seemed to have been worried 
small by her position, like a bone among contending 
dogs, in the middle of different indignations. What 
would be the effect on her of this final blow? ‘The 
thought of it haunted Lucy and spoilt all the last days 
before her marriage, days which she otherwise would 
have loved, because she very quickly became infected 
by the boyish delight and excitement over their secret 
that made Wemyss hardly able to keep still in his chair. 
He didn’t keep still in it. Once at least he got up and 
did some slow steps about the room, moving with an 


VERA 119 


apparent solemnity because of not being used to such 
steps, which he informed her presently were a dance. 
Till he told her this she watched him too much surprised 
to say anything. So did penguins dance in pictures. 
She couldn’t think what was the matter with him. 
When he had done, and told her, breathing a little hard, 
that it was a dance symbolic of married happiness, she 
laughed and laughed, and flew to hug him. 

“Baby, oh, baby!” she said, rubbing her cheek up 
and down his coat. 

“Who’s another baby?” he asked, breathless but 
beaming. 

Such was their conversation. 

But poor Aunt Dot.... 

Lucy couldn’t bear to think of poor little kind Aunt 
Dot. She had been so wonderful, so patient, and she 
would be deeply horrified by a runaway marriage. 
Never, never would she understand the reason for it. 
She didn’t a bit understand Everard, didn’t begin to 
understand him, and that his birthday should be a 
reason for breaking what she would regard as the com- 
mon decencies would of course only seem to her too 
childish to be even discussed. Lucy was afraid Aunt 
Dot was going to be very much upset,—poor darling 
little Aunt Dot. Conscience-stricken, she couldn’t do 
enough for Aunt Dot now that the secret date was 
fixed. She watched for every possible want during their 
times alone, flew to fetch things, darted at dropped 
handkerchiefs, kissed her not only at bedtime and in 
the morning but whenever there was the least excuse and 


120 tute O1.' 


with the utmost tenderness; and every kiss and every 
look seemed to say, ‘Forgive me.” 

“Are they going to run away?” wondered Miss 
Entwhistle presently. 

Lucy would have been immensely taken aback, and 
perhaps, such is one’s perversity, even hurt, if she 
could have seen the ray of hope which at this thought 
lit her Aunt Dot’s exhausted mind; for Miss Entwhis- 
tle’s life, which had been a particularly ordered and 
calm one up to the day when Wemyss first called at 
Eaton Terrace, had since then been nothing but just 
confused clamour, Everybody was displeased with her, 
and each for directly opposite reasons. She had fallen 
on evil days, and they had by February been going on 
so long that she felt worn out. Wemyss, she was quite 
aware, disliked her heartily; her Jim was dead; Lucy, 
her one living relation, so tenderly loved, was every day 
disappearing further before her very eyes into 
Wemyss’s personality, into what she sometimes was 
betrayed by fatigue and impatience into calling to 
herself the Wemyss maw; and her little house, which 
had always been so tranquil, had become, she wearily 
felt, the cockpit of London. She used to crawl back 
to it with footsteps that lagged more and more the 
nearer she got, after her enforced prolonged daily 
outings—enforced and prolonged because the house 
couldn’t possibly hold both herself and Wemyss except 
for the briefest moments,—and drearily wonder what 
letters she would find from Jim’s friends scolding her, 
and what fresh arrangements in the way of tiring motor 


VERA 121 


excursions, or invitations to tea at that dreadful house 
in Lancaster Gate, would be sprung upon her. Did all 
engagements pursue such a turbulent course? she asked 
herself,—she had given up asking the oracle of Chesham 
Street anything because of her disconcerting answers. 
How glad she was she had never been engaged; how 
glad she was she had refused the offers she had had 
when she was a girl. Quite recently she had met one 
of those would-be husbands in an omnibus, and how 
glad she was when she looked at him that she had re- 
fused him. People don’t keep well, mused Miss Ent- 
whistle. If Lucy would only refuse Wemyss now, how 
glad she would be that she had when she met him in ten 
years’ time in an omnibus, 

But these, of course, were merely the reflections of 
a tired-out spinster, and she still had enough spirit to 
laugh at them to herself. After all, whatever she might 
feel about Wemyss Lucy adored him, and when anybody 
adores anybody as much as that, Miss Entwhistle 
thought, the only thing to do is to marry and have 
done withit. No; that was cynical, She meant, marry 
and not have done with it. Ah, if only the child were 
marrying that nice young Teddy Trevor, her own age 
and so devoted, and with every window-sill throughout 
his house in Chelsea the proper height. ... 

Miss Entwhistle was very unhappy all this time, 
besides having feet that continually ached. Though 
she dreaded the marriage, yet she couldn’t help feeling 
that it would be delicious to be able once more to sit 
down. How enchanting to sit quietly in her own empty 


122 VERA 


drawing-room, and not to have to walk about London 
any more. How enchanting not to make any further 
attempts to persuade herself that she enjoyed Bat- 
tersea Park, and liked the Embankment, and was 
entertained by Westminster Abbey. What she wanted 
with an increasing longing that amounted at last to 
desperation as the winter dragged on, was her own 
chair by the fire and an occasional middle-aged crony 
to tea. She had reached the time of life when one likes 
sitting down. Also she had definitely got to the period 
of cronies. One’s contemporaries—people who had 
worn the same kinds of clothes as oneself in girlhood, 
who remembered bishop’s sleeves and could laugh with 
one about bustles—how very much one longed for one’s 
contemporaries. 

When, then, Lucy’s behaviour suddenly became so 
markedly attentive and so very tender, when she caught 
her looking at her with wistful affection and flushing on 
being caught, when her good-nights and good-mornings 
were many kisses instead of one, and she kept on jump- 
ing up and bringing her teaspoons she hadn’t asked for 
and sugar she didn’t want, Miss Entwhistle began to 
revive, 

“Is it possible they’re going to run away?” she 
wondered; and so much reduced was she that she very 
nearly hoped so. 


XII 


UCY had meant to do exactly as Wemyss said 
and keep her marriage secret, creeping out of 
the house quietly, going off with him abroad 

after the registrar had bound them together, and tele- 
graphing or writing to her aunt from some safe dis- 
tant place en route like Boulogne; but on saying good- 
night the evening before the wedding day, to her very 
great consternation her aunt, whom she was in the act 
of kissing, suddenly pushed her gently a little away, 
looked at her a moment, and then holding her by both 
arms said with conviction, “It’s to-morrow.” 

Lucy could only stare. She stared idiotically, open- 
mouthed, her face scarlet. She looked and felt both 
foolish and frightened. Aunt Dot was uncanny. If 
she had discovered, how had she discovered? And 
what was she going to do? But had she discovered, 
or was it just something she chanced to remember, 
some engagement Lucy had naturally forgotten, or 
perhaps only somebody coming to tea? 

She clutched at this straw. ‘What is to-morrow?” 
she stammered, scarlet with fright and guilt. 

And her aunt made herself perfectly clear by reply- 
ing, “Your wedding.” 

Then Lucy fell on her neck and cried and told her 

123 


124 | VERA 


everything, and her wonderful, unexpected, uncanny, 
adorable little aunt, instead of being upset and making 
her feel too wicked and ungrateful to live, was full of 
sympathy and understanding. They sobbed together, 
sitting on the sofa locked in each other’s arms, but it 
was a sweet sobbing, for they both felt at this moment 
how much they loved each other. Miss Entwhistle 
wished she had never had a single critical impatient 
thought of the man this darling little child so deeply 
loved, and Lucy wished she had never had a single 
secret from this darling little aunt Everard so blindly 
didn’t love. Dear, dear little Aunt Dot. Lucy’s heart 
was big with gratitude and tenderness and pity,—pity 
because she herself was so gloriously happy and sur- 
rounded by love, and Aunt Dot’s life seemed, compared 
to hers, so empty, so solitary, and going to be like that 
till the end of her days; and Miss Entwhistle’s heart 
was big with yearning over this lamb of Jim’s who was 
giving herself with such fearlessness, all lit up by radi- 
ant love, into the hands of a strange husband. Pres- 
ently, of course, he wouldn’t be a strange husband, he 
would be a familiar husband; but would he be any 
the better for that? she wondered. ‘They sobbed, and 
kissed, and sobbed again, each keeping half her 
thoughts to herself. 

This is how it was that Miss Entwhistle walked into 
the registrar’s office with Lucy next morning and was 
one of the witnesses of the marriage. 

Wemyss had a very bad moment when he saw her 
come in. His heart gave a great thump, such as it had 


VERA 125 


never done in his life before, for he thought there was 
to be a hitch and that at the very last minute he was 
somehow not going to get his Lucy. Then he looked at 
Lucy and was reassured. Her face was like the morning 
of a perfect day in its cloudlessness, her Love-in-a-Mist 
eyes were dewy with tenderness as they rested on him, 
and her mouth was twisted up by happiness into the 
sweetest, funniest little crooked smile. If only she 
would take off her hat, thought Wemyss, bursting with 
pride, so that the registrar could see how young she 
looked with her short hair,—why, perhaps the old boy 
might think she was too young to be married and start 
asking searching questions! What fun that would be. 

He himself produced the effect on Miss Entwhistle, 
as he stood next to Lucy being married, of an enormous 
schoolboy who had just won some silver cup or other 
for his House after immense exertions. He had exactly 
that glowing face of suppressed triumph and pride; he 
was red with delighted achievement. 

“Put the ring on your wife’s finger,’ ordered the 
registrar when, having got through the first part of 
the ceremony, Wemyss, busy beaming down at Lucy,, 
forgot there was anything more to do. And Lucy 
stuck up her hand with all the fingers spread out andi 
stiff, and her face beamed too with happiness at the 
words, “Your wife.” 

“““Nothing is here for tears,’” quoted Miss Ent-- 
whistle to herself, watching the blissful absorption with 
which they were both engaged in getting the ring 
successfully over the knuckle of the proper’ finger.. 


126 VERA 


““He really ts a—a dear. Yes. Of course. But how 
queer life is. I wonder what he was doing this day 
last year, he and that poor wife of his.” 

When it was over and they were outside on the 
steps, with the taxi Wemyss had come in waiting to 
take them to the station, Miss Entwhistle realised that 
here was the place and moment of good-bye, and that 
not only could she go no further with Lucy but that 
from now on she could do nothing more for her. Except 
love her. Except listen to her. Ah, she would always 
be there to love and listen to her; but happiest of all 
it would be for the little thing if she never, from her, 
were to need either of those services. 

At the last moment she put her hand impulsively 
on Wemyss’s breast and looked up into his triumphant, 
flushed face and said, “Be kind to her.” 

“Oh, Aunt Dot!” laughed Lucy, turning to hug her 
once more. 

“Oh, Aunt Dot!” laughed Wemyss, vigorously shak- 
ing her hand. 

They went down the steps, leaving her standing alone 
on the top, and she watched the departing taxi with the 
two heads bobbing up and down at the window and the 
four hands waving good-byes. That taxi window could 
never have framed in so much triumph, so much radi- 
ance before. Well, well, thought Aunt Dot, going down 
in her turn when the last glimpse of them had dis- 
appeared, and walking slowly homeward; and she added, 
after a space of further reflection, “He really is a 
—a dear.” 


XIV 


ARRIAGE, Lucy found, was different from 
M what she had supposed; Everard was differ- 
ent. For one thing she was always sleepy. 

For another she was never alone. She hadn’t realised 
how completely she would never be alone, or, if alone, 
not sure for one minute to the other of going on being 
alone. Always in her life there had been intervals 
during which she recuperated in solitude from any 
strain; now there were none. Always there had been 
places she could go to and rest in quietly, safe from 
interruption; now there were none. The very sight 
of their room at the hotels they stayed at, with 
Wemyss’s suit-cases and clothes piled on the chairs, 
and the table covered with his brushes and shaving 
things,—for he wouldn’t have a dressing-room, being 
too natural and wholesome, he explained, to want any- 
thing separate from his own woman—the very sight 
of this room fatigued her. After a day of churches, 
pictures and restaurants—he was a most conscientious 
sightseer, besides being greatly interested in his meals 
—to come back to this room wasn’t rest but further 
fatigue. Wemyss, who was never tired and slept won- 
derfully—it was the soundness of his sleep that kept 
her awake, because she wasn’t used to hearing sound 

27 


128 ; VERA 


sleep so close—would fling himself into the one easy- 
chair and pull her on to his knee, and having kissed 
her a great many times he would ruffle her hair, and 
then when it was all on ends like a boy’s coming out 
of a bath look at her with the pride of possession and 
say, “There’s a wife for a respectable British business 
man to have! Mrs. Wemyss, aren’t you ashamed of 
yourself?” And then there would be more kissing,— 
jovial, gluttonous kisses, that made her skin rough 
and chapped. | 

“Baby,” she would say, feebly struggling, and smil- 
ing a little wearily. 

Yes, he was a baby, a dear, high-spirited baby, but 
a baby now at very close quarters and one that went 
on all the time. You couldn’t put him in a cot and 
give him a bottle and say, “There now,” and then sit 
down quietly to a little sewing; you didn’t have Sun- 
days out; you were never, day or night, an instant off 
duty. Lucy couldn’t count the number of times a day 
she had to answer the question, ‘“‘Who’s my own little 
wife?” At first she answered it with laughing ecstasy, 
running into his outstretched arms, but very soon that 
fatal sleepiness set in and remained with her for the 
whole of her honeymoon, and she really felt too tired 
sometimes to get the ecstasy she quickly got to know 
was expected of her into her voice. She loved him, she 
was indeed his own little wife, but constantly to an- 
swer this and questions like it satisfactorily was a 
great exertion. Yetif there was a shadow of hesitation 
before she answered, a hair’s-breadth of delay owing to 


VERA 129 


her thoughts having momentarily wandered, Wemyss 
was upset, and she had to spend quite a long time 
reassuring him with the fondest whispers and caresses. 
Her thoughts mustn’t wander, she had discovered ; her 
thoughts were to be his as well as all the rest of her. 
Was ever a girl so much loved? she asked herself, 
astonished and proud; but, on the other hand, she 
was dreadfully sleepy. 

Any thinking she did had to be done at night, when 
she lay awake because of the immense emphasis with 
which Wemyss slept, and she hadn’t been married a 
week before she was reflecting what a bad arrangement 
it was, the way ecstasy seemed to have no staying 
power. Also it oughn’t to begin, she considered, at its 
topmost height and accordingly not be able to move 
except downwards. If one could only start modestly 
in marriage with very little of it and work steadily 
upwards, taking one’s time, knowing there was more 
and more to come, it would be much better, she thought. 
No doubt it would go on longer if one slept better and 
hadn’t, consequently, got headaches. Everard’s ecstasy 
went on. Perhaps by ecstasy she really meant high 
spirits, and Everard was beside himself with high 
spirits. 

Wemyss was indeed the typical bridegroom of the 
Psalms, issuing forth rejoicing from his chamber. Lucy 
wished she could issue forth from it rejoicing too. She 
was vexed with herself for being so stupidly sleepy, for 
not being able to get used to the noise beside her at 
night and go to sleep as naturally as she did in Eaton 


130 VERA 


Terrace, in spite of the horns of taxis. It wasn’t fair 
to Everard, she felt, not to find a wife in the morning 
matching him in spirits. Perhaps, however, this was a 
condition peculiar to honeymoons, and marriage, once 
the honeymoon was over, would be a more tranquil state. 
Things would settle down when they were back in 
England, to a different, more separated life in which 
there would be time to rest, time to think; time to 
remember, while he was away at his office, how deeply 
she loved him. And surely she would learn to sleep; 
and once she slept properly she would be able to answer 
his loving questions throughout the day with more 
real élan. 

But,—there in England waiting for her, inevitable: 
no longer to be put off or avoided, was The Willows. 
Whenever her thoughts reached that house they gave 
a little jump and tried to slink away. She was ashamed 
of herself, it was ridiculous, and Everard’s attitude was 
plainly the sensible one, and if he could adopt it surely 
she, who hadn’t gone through that terrible afternoon 
last July, could; yet she failed to see herself in The 
Willows, she failed altogether to imagine it. How, for 
instance, was she going to sit on that terrace,—‘We 
always have tea in fine weather on the terrace,” Wemyss 
had casually remarked, apparently quite untouched by 
the least memory—how was she going to have tea on 
the very flags perhaps where. . . . Her thoughts slunk 
away; but not before one of them had sent a curdling 
whisper through her mind, “The tea would taste of 
blood.” 


VERA 131 


Well, this was sleeplessness. She never in her life 
had had that sort of absurd thought. It was just that 
she didn’t sleep, and so her brain was relaxed and let 
the reins of her thinking go slack. The day her father 
died, it’s true, when it began to be evening and she was 
afraid of the night alone with him in his mysterious 
indifference, she had begun thinking absurdly, but 
Everard had come and saved her. He could save her 
from this too if she could tell him; only she couldn’t 
tell him. How could she spoil his joy in his home? 
It was the thing he loved next best to her. 

As the honeymoon went on and Wemyss’s ecstasies 
a little subsided, as he began to tire of so many trains— 
after Paris they did the chateaux country—and hotels 
and waiters and taxis and restaurants, and the cooking 
which he had at first enjoyed now only increased his 
longing at every meal for a plain English steak and 
boiled potatoes, he talked more and more of The Wil- 
lows. With almost the same eagerness as that which 
had so much enchanted and moved her before their 
marriage when he talked of their wedding day, he now 
talked of The Willows and the day when he would show 
it to her. He counted the days now to that day. 
The 4th of April; his birthday; on that happy day 
he would lead his little wife into the home he loved. 
How could she, when he talked like that, do anything 
but pretend enthusiasm and looking forward? He had 
apparently entirely forgotten what she had told him 
about her reluctance to go there at Christmas. She 
was astonished that, when the first bliss of being mar- 


132 VERA 


ried to her had worn off and his thoughts were free 
for this other thing he so much loved, his home, he 
‘didn’t approach it with more care for what he must 
‘know was her feeling about it. She was still more 
astonished when she realised that he had entirely for- 
gotten her feeling about it. It would be, she felt, 
impossible to shadow his happiness at the prospect of 
showing her his home by any reminder of her re- 
luctance. Besides, she was certainly going to have 
to live at The Willows, so what was the use of talking? 

“I suppose,” she did say hesitatingly one day when 
he was describing it to her for the hundredth time, for 
it was his habit to describe the same thing often, 
“you’ve changed your room fe 

They were sitting at the moment, resting after the 
climb up, on one of the terraces of the Chateau of 
Amboise, with a view across the Loire of an immense 
horizon, and Wemyss had been comparing it, to its 
disadvantage, when he recovered his breath, with the 
view from his bedroom window at The Willows. It 
wasn’t very nice weather, and they both were cold and 
tired, and it was still only eleven o’clock in the morn- 
ing. 

“Change my room? What room?” he asked. 

*“Your—the room you and—the room you slept in.” 

“My bedroom? I should think not. It’s the best 
room in the house. Why do you think I’ve changed 
it??? And he looked at her with a surprised face. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lucy, taking refuge in 
stroking his hand. “I only thought *” 








VERA 133 


An inkling of what was in her mind penetrated into 
his, and his voice went grave. 

“You mustn’t think,” he said. “You mustn’t be 
morbid. Now Lucy, I can’t have that. It will spoil 
everything if you let yourself be morbid. And you 
promised me before our marriage you wouldn’t be. 
Have you forgotten?” 

He turned to her and took her face in both his hands 
and searched her eyes with his own very solemn ones, 
while the woman who was conducting them over the 
castle went to the low parapet, and stood with her back 
to them studying the view and yawning. 

“Oh, Everard—of course I haven’t forgotten. Ive 
not forgotten anything I promised you, and never will. 
But—have I got to go into that bedroom too?”’ 

He was really astonished. “Have you got to go into 
that bedroom too?” he repeated, staring at the face 
enclosed in his two big hands. It looked extraordi- 
narily pretty like that, very like a small flower in its 
delicate whiteness next to his discoloured, middle-aged 
hands, and her mouth since her marriage seemed to 
have become an even more vivid red than it used to 
be, and her eyes were young enough to be made more 
beautiful instead of less by the languor of want of 
sleep. “Well, I should think so. Aren’t you my wife?” 

“Yes,” said Lucy. “But aa 

“Now, Lucy, Ill have no buts,” he said, with his 
most serious air, kissing her on the cheek,—she had 
discovered that just that kind of kiss was a rebuke. 
“Those buts of yours butt in a 








134 VERA 


He stopped, struck by what he had said. 

“T think that was rather amusing—don’t you?” he 
asked, suddenly smiling. 

“Oh yes—very,” said Lucy eagerly, smiling too, 
delighted that he should switch off from solemnity. 

He kissed her again,—this time a real kiss, on her 
funny, charming mouth. 

“I suppose you'll admit,” he said, laughing and 
squeezing up her face into a quaint crumpled shape, 


“that either you’re my wife or not my wife, and that 
oF 





if you’re my wife 

“Oh, ’m that all right,” laughed Lucy. 

‘Then you share my room. None of these damned 
new-fangled notions for me, young woman.” 

“Oh, but I didn’t mean a 

“What? Another but?” he exclaimed, pouncing 
down on to her mouth and stopping it with an 
enormous kiss. 

“Monsieur et Madame se refroidiront,’’ said the 
woman, turning round and drawing her shawl closer 
over her chest as a gust of chilly wind swept over the 
terrace. 

They were honeymooners, poor creatures, and there- 
fore one had patience; but even honeymooners oughtn’t 
to wish to embrace in a cold wind on an exposed terrace 
of a chateau round which they were being conducted by 
a woman who was in a hurry to return to the prepara- 
tion of her Sunday dinner. For such purposes hotels 
were provided, and the shelter of a comfortable warm 
room. She had supposed them to be pére et fille when 





VERA 135 


first she admitted them, but was soon aware of their 
real relationship: “Jl doit étre bien riche,” had been 
her conclusion. 

“Come along, come along,” said Wemyss, getting up 
quickly, for he too felt the gust of cold wind. ‘“Let’s 
finish the chateau or we'll be late for lunch. I wish 
they hadn’t preserved so many of these places—one 
would have been quite enough to show us the sort of 
thing.” 

“But we needn’t go and look at them all,” said Lucy. 

“Oh yes we must. We’ve arranged to.” 

“But Everard ” began Lucy, following after him 
as he followed after the conductress, who had a way of 
darting out of sight round corners. 

“This woman’s like a lizard,” panted Wemyss, ar- 
riving round a corner only to see her disappear through 
an arch. ‘“Won’t we be happy when it’s time to go 
back to England and not have to see any more sights?” 

“But why don’t we go back now, if you feel like it?” 
asked Lucy, trotting after him as he on his big legs 
pursued the retreating conductress, and anxious to 





show him, by eagerness to go sooner to The Willows 
than was arranged, that she wasn’t being morbid. 

“Why, you know we can’t leave before the 3rd of 
April,” said Wemyss, over his shoulder. “It’s all 
settled.” 

“But can’t it be unsettled?” 

“What, and upset all the plans, and arrive home 
before my birthday?” He'stopped and turned round 
to stare at her. “Really, my dear ”? he said. 





136 VERA 


She had discovered that my dear was a term of 
rebuke. 

“Oh yes—of course,” she said hastily, “I forgot 
about your birthday.” 

At that Wemyss stared at her harder than ever; 
incredulously, in fact. Forgot about his birthday? 
Lucy had forgotten? If it had been Vera, now—but 
Lucy? He was deeply hurt. He was so much hurt 
that he stood quite still, and the conductress was 
obliged, on discovering that she was no longer being 
followed, to wait once more for the honeymooners ; 
which she did, clutching her shawl round her abundant 
French chest and shivering. 

What had she said, Lucy hurriedly asked herself, 
running over her last words in her mind, for she had 
learned by now what he looked like when he was hurt. 
Oh yes,—the birthday. How stupid of her. But it 
was because birthdays in her family were so unim- 
portant, and nobody had minded whether they were 
remembered or not. 

“I didn’t mean that,” she said earnestly, laying her — 
hand on his breast. “Of course I hadn’t forgotten 
anything so precious. It only had—well, you know 
what even the most wonderful things do sometimes— 
it—it had escaped my memory.” 

“Lucy! Escaped your memory? The day to which 
you owe your husband?” 

Wemyss said this with such an exaggerated sol- 
emnity, such an immense pomposity, that she thought 
he was in fun and hadn’t really minded about the 


VERA 137 


birthday at all; and, eager to meet every mood of his, 
she laughed. Relieved, she was so unfortunate as to 
laugh merrily. 

To her consternation, after a moment’s further stare 
he turned his back on her without a word and walked on. 

Then she realised what she had done, that she had 
laughed—oh, how dreadful!—in the wrong place, and 
she ran after him and put her arm through his, and 
tried to lay her cheek against his sleeve, which was 
difficult because of the way their paces didn’t match 
and also because he took no notice of her, and said, 
“Baby—baby—were his dear feelings hurt then?” and 
coaxed him, 

But he wouldn’t be coaxed. She had wounded him 
too deeply,—laughing, he said to himself, at what was 
to him the most sacred thing in life, the fact that he 
was her husband, that she was his wife. 

“Oh, Everard,” she murmured at last, withdrawing 
her arm, giving up, “‘don’t spoil our day.” 

Spoil their day? He? That finished it. 

He didn’t speak to her again till night. Then, in 
bed, after she had cried bitterly for a long while, be- 
cause she couldn’t make out what really had happened, 
and she loved him so much, and wouldn’t hurt him for 
the world, and was heartbroken because she had, and 
anyhow was tired out, he at last turned to her and took” 
her to his arms again and forgave her. 

“T can’t live,” sobbed Lucy, “I can’t live—if you 
don’t go on loving me—if we don’t understand < 

“My little Love,” said Wemyss, melted by the way 





138 VERA 


her small body was shaking in his arms, and rather 
frightened, too, at the excess of her woe. “My little 
Love—don’t. You mustn’t. Your Everard loves you, 
and you mustn’t give way like this. You'll be ill. 
Think how miserable you’d make him then.” 

And in the dark he kissed away her tears, and held 
her close till her sobbing quieted down; and presently, 
held close like that, his kisses shutting her smarting 
eyes, she now the baby comforted and reassured, and 
he the soothing nurse, she fell asleep, and for the first 
time since her marriage slept all night. 


hy ei 


—. 


XV 


pounded his theory to Lucy that there should 

be the most perfect frankness between lovers, 
while as for husband and wife there oughtn’t to be a 
corner anywhere about either of them, mind, body, or 
soul, which couldn’t be revealed to the other one. 

“You can talk about everything to your Everard,” 
he assured her. ‘Tell him your innermost thoughts, 
whatever they may be. You need no more be ashamed 
of telling him than of thinking them by yourself. He 
is you. You and he are one in mind and soul now, 
and when he is your husband you and he will become 
perfect and complete by being one in body as well. 
Everard—Lucy. Lucy—Everard. We shan’t know 
where one ends and the other begins. That, little Love, 
is real marriage. What do you think of it?” 

Lucy thought so highly of it that she had no words 
with which to express her admiration, and fell to kissing 
him instead. What ideal happiness, to be for ever 
removed from the fear of loneliness by the simple ex- 
pedient of being doubled; and who so happy as herself 
to have found the exactly right person for this doubling, 
one she could so perfectly agree with and understand? 
She felt quite sorry she had nothing in her mind in the 

139 


oud in their engagement Wemyss had ex- 


140 VERA 


way of thoughts she was ashamed of to tell him then 
and there, but there wasn’t a doubt, there wasn’t a 
shred of anything a little wrong, not even an unworthy 
suspicion. Her mind was a chalice filled only with love, 
and so clear and bright was the love that even at the 
bottom, when she stirred it up to look, there wasn’t a 
trace of sediment. 

But marriage—or was it sleeplessness?—completely 
changed this, and there were perfect crowds of thoughts 
in her mind that she was thoroughly ashamed of. Re- 
membering his words, and whole-heartedly agreeing that 
to be able to tell each other everything, to have no 
concealments, was real marriage, the day after her 
wedding she first of all reminded him of what he had 
said, then plunged bravely into the announcement that 
she’d got a thought she was ashamed of. 

Wemyss pricked up his ears, thinking it was some- 
thing interesting to do with sex, and waited with an 
amused, inquisitive smile. But Lucy in such matters 
was content to follow him, aware of her want of ex- 
perience and of the abundance of his, and the thought 
that was worrying her only had to do with a waiter. 
A waiter, if you please. 

Wemyss’s smile died away. He had had occasion 
to reprimand this waiter at lunch for gross negligence, 
and here was Lucy alleging he had done so without 
any reason that she could see, and anyhow roughly. 
Would he remove the feeling of discomfort she had at 
being forced to think her own heart’s beloved, the kind- 


VERA 141 


est and gentlest of men, hadn’t been kind and gentle 
but unjust, by explaining? 

Well, that was at the very beginning. She soon 
learned that a doubt in her mind was better kept there. 
If she brought it out to air it and dispel it by talking 
it over with him, all that happened was that he was 
hurt, and when he was hurt she instantly became 
perfectly miserable. Seeing, then, that this happened 
about small things, how impossible it was to talk with 
him of big things; of, especially, her immense doubt in 
regard to The Willows. For a long while she was sure 
he was bearing her feeling in mind, since it couldn’t 
have changed since Christmas, and that when she 
arrived there she would find that he had had everything 
altered and all traces of Vera’s life there removed. 
Then, when he began to talk about The Willows, she 
found that such an idea as alterations hadn’t entered 
his head. She was to sleep in the very room that had 
been his and Vera’s, in the very bed. And positively, 
so far was it from true that she could tell him every 
thought and talk everything over with him, when 
she discovered this she wasn’t able to say more than 
that hesitating remark on the chateau terrace at Am- 
boise about supposing he was going to change his bed- 
room. 

Yet The Willows haunted her, and what a comfort 
it would have been to tell him all she felt and let 
him help her to get rid of her growing obsession by 
laughing at her. What a comfort if, even if he had 
thought her too silly and morbid to be laughed at, 


142 VERA 


he had indulged her and consented to alter those 
rooms. But one learns a lot on a honeymoon, Lucy 
reflected, and one of the things she had learned was 
that Wemyss’s mind was always made up. ‘There 
seemed to be no moment when it was in a condition of 
becoming, and she might have slipped in a suggestion 
or laid a wish before him; his plans were sprung upon 
her full fledged, and they were unalterable. Some- 
times he said, “Would you like——?” and if she didn’t 
like, and answered truthfully, as she answered at first 
before she learned not to, there was trouble. Silent 
trouble. <A retirmg of Wemyss into a hurt aloofness, 
for his question was only decorative, and his little love 
should instinctively, he considered, like what he liked; 
and there outside this aloofness, after efforts to get 
at him with fond and anxious questions, she sat like a 
beggar in patient distress, waiting for him to emerge 
and be kind to her, 

Of course as far as the minor wishes and preferences 
of every day went it was all quite easy, once she had 
grasped the right answer to the question, ‘“‘Would you 
like?” She instantly did like. “Oh yes—very much!” 
she hastened to assure him; and then his face continued 
content and happy instead of clouding with aggrieve- 
ment. But about the big things it wasn’t easy, because 
of the difficulty of getting the right flavour of en- 
thusiasm into her voice, and if she didn’t get it in he 
would put his finger under her chin and turn her to the 
light and repeat the question in a solemn voice,— 


VERA 143 


precursor, she had learned, of the beginning of the cloud 
on his face. 

How difficult it was sometimes. When he said to 
her, “You'll like the view from your sitting-room at 
The Willows,” she naturally wanted to cry out that 
she wouldn’t, and ask him how he could suppose she 
would like what was to her a view for ever associated 
with death? Why shouldn’t she be able to cry out 
naturally if she wanted to, to talk to him frankly, to 
get his help to cure herself of what was so ridiculous 
by laughing at it with him? She couldn’t laugh all 
alone, though she was always trying to; with him she 
could have, and so have become quite sensible. For 
he was so much bigger than she was, so wonderful in 
the way he had triumphed over diseased thinking, and 
his wholesomeness would spread over her too, a purging, 
disinfecting influence, if only he would let her talk, if 
only he would help her to laugh. Instead, she found 
herself hurriedly saying in a small, anxious voice, “Oh 
yes—very much!’ 

“Is it possible,” she thought, “that I am abject?” 

Yes, she was extremely abject, she reflected, lying 
awake at night considering her behaviour during the 
day. Love had made her so. Love did make one 
abject, for it was full of fear of hurting the beloved. 
The assertion of the Scriptures that perfect love casteth 
out fear only showed, seeing that her love for Everard 
was certainly perfect, how little the Scriptures really 
knew what they were talking about. 

Well, if she couldn’t tell him the things she was 


144 VERA 


feeling, why couldn’t she get rid of the sorts of feelings 
she couldn’t tell him, and just be wholesome? Why 
couldn’t she be at least as wholesome about going to 
that house as Everard? If anybody was justified in 
shrinking from The Willows it was Everard, not her- 
self. Sometimes Lucy would be sure that deep in his 
character there was a wonderful store of simple cour- 
age. He didn’t speak of Vera’s death, naturally he 
didn’t wish to speak of that awful afternoon, but how 
often he must think of it, hiding his thoughts even from 
her, bearing them altogether alone. Sometimes she was 
sure of this, and sometimes she was equally sure of the 
very opposite. From the way he looked, the way he 
spoke, from those tiny indications that one somehow has 
noticed without knowing that one has noticed and that 
are so far more revealing and conclusive than any 
words, she sometimes was sure he really had forgotten. 
But this was too incredible. She couldn’t believe it. 
What had perhaps happened, she thought, was that in 
self-defence, for the preservation of his peace, he had 
made up his mind never to think of Vera. Only by 
banishing her altogether from his mind would he be 
safe. Yet that couldn’t be true either, for several 
times on the honeymoon he had begun talking of her, 
of things she had said, of things she had liked, and 
it was she, Lucy, who stopped him. She shrank from 
hearing anything about Vera. She especially shrank 
from hearing her mentioned casually. She was ready 
to brace herself to talk about her if it was to be a 
serious talk, because she wanted to help and comfort 


VERA 145 


him whenever the remembrance of her death arose to 
torment him, but she couldn’t bear to hear her men- 
tioned casually. In a way she admired this casualness, 
because it was a proof of the supreme wholesomeness 
Everard had attained to by sheer courageous deter- 
mination, but even so she couldn’t help thinking that 
she would have preferred a little less of just this kind 
of wholesomeness in her beloved. She might be too 
morbid, but wasn’t it possible to be too wholesome? 
Anyhow she shrank from the intrusion of Vera into her 
honeymoon. That, at least, ought to be kept free from 
her. Later on at The Willows. ... 

Lucy fought and fought against it, but always at 
the back of her mind was the thought, not looked at, 
slunk away from, but nevertheless fixed, that there at 
The Willows, waiting for her, was Vera. 


XVI 


HOSE who go to Strorley, and cross the bridge 
to the other side of the river, have only to 
follow the towpath for a little to come to The 
Willows. It can also be reached by road, through a 
white gate down a lane that grows more and more 
willowy as it gets nearer the river and the house, but 
is quite passable for carts and even for cars, except 
when there are floods. When there are floods this lane 
disappears, and when the floods have subsided it is 
black and oozing for a long time afterwards, with 
clouds of tiny flies dancing about in it if the weather 
is at all warm, and the shoes of those who walk stick 
in it and come off, and those who drive, especially if 
they drive a car, have trouble. But all is well once 
a second white gate is reached, on the other side of 
which is a gravel sweep, a variety of handsome shrubs, 
nicely kept lawns, and The Willows. There are no 
big trees in the garden of The Willows, because it 
was built in the middle of meadows where there weren’t 
any, but all round the iron railings of the square garden 
—the house being the centre of the square—and con- 
cealing the wire netting which keeps the pasturing 
cows from thrusting their heads through and eating 
the shrubs, is a fringe of willows. Hence its name. 
146 


VERA 147 


“A house,’ said Wemyss, explaining its name to 
Lucy on the morning of their arrival, “should always 
be named after whatever most insistently catches the 
eye.” 

“Then oughtn’t it to have been called The Cows?” 
asked Lucy ; for the meadows round were strewn thickly 
as far as she could see with recumbent cows, and they 
caught her eye much more than the tossing bare willow 
branches. 

“No,” said Wemyss, annoyed. “It ought not have 
been called The Cows.” 

*“No—of course I didn’t mean that,” she said hastily. 

Lucy was nervous, and said what first came into 
her head, and had been saying things of this nature 
the whole journey down. She didn’t want to, she 
knew he didn’t like it, but she couldn’t stop. 

They had just arrived, and were standing on the 
front steps while the servants unloaded the fly that 
had brought them from the station, and Wemyss was 
pointing out what he wished her to look at and admire 
from that raised-up place before taking her indoors. 
Lucy was glad of any excuse that delayed going in- 
doors, that kept her on the west side of the house, 
furthest away from the terrace and the library win- 
dow. Indoors would be the rooms, the unaltered rooms, 
the library past whose window .. . The sitting-room 
at the top of the house out of whose window .. . the 
bedroom she was going to sleep in with the very bed. 
. . ,» It was too miserably absurd, too unbalanced of 
her for anything but shame and self-contempt, how 


148 VERA 


she couldn’t get away from the feeling that indoors 
waiting for her would be Vera. 

It was a grey, windy morning, with low clouds 
scurrying across the meadows. The house was raised 
well above the flood level, and standing on the top step 
she could see how far the meadows stretched beyond 
the swaying willow hedge. Grey sky, grey water, green 
fields,—it was all grey and green except the house, 
which was red brick with handsome stone facings, and 
made, in its exposed position unhidden by any trees, 
a great splotch of vivid red in the landscape. 

“Like blood,” said Lucy to herself; and was im- 
mediately ashamed. 

“Oh, how bracing!” she cried, spreading out her 
arms and letting the wind blow her serge wrap out 
behind her like a flag. It whipped her skirt round 
her body, showing its slender pretty lines, and the 
parlourmaid, going in and out with the luggage, looked 
curiously at this small juvenile new mistress. ‘Oh, I 
love this wind—don’t take me indoors yet x4 

Wemyss was pleased that she should like the wind, 





for was it not by the time it reached his house part, too, 
of his property?. His face, which had clouded a little 
because of The Cows, cleared again. 

But she didn’t really like the wind at all, she never 
had liked anything that blustered and was cold, and if 
she hadn’t been nervous the last thing she would have 
done was to stand there letting it blow her to pieces. 

“And what a lot of laurels!” she exclaimed, holding 


VERA 149 


on her hat with one hand and with the other pointing 
to a corner filled with these shrubs. 

“Yes. Ill take you round the garden after lunch,” 
said Wemyss. “We'll go in now.” 

“And—and laurustinus. I love laurustinus 

“Yes. Vera planted that. It has done very well. 
Come in now ‘ 

*“And—look, what are those bare things without any 
leaves yet?” 

“Tl show you everything after lunch, Lucy. Come 
in ” And he put his arm about her shoulders, and 
urged her through the door the maid was holding open 
with difficulty because of the wind. 

There she was, then, actually inside The Willows. 
The door was shut behind her. She looked about her 
shrinkingly. 

They were in a roomy place with a staircase in it. 

“The hall,” said Wemyss, standing still, his arm 
round her. 

*“Yes,”’ said Lucy. 

“Oak,” said Wemyss. 

“Yes,” said Lucy. 

He gazed round him with a sigh of satisfaction at 
having got back to it. 

“All oak,” he said. ‘‘You’ll find nothing gimcrack 
about my house, little Love. Where are those flowers?” 
he added, turning sharply to the parlourmaid. “I 
don’t see my yellow flowers.” 

“They’re in the dining-room, sir,’ 
maid. 


>be; 











b) 


said the parlour- 


150 VERA 


“Why aren’t they where I could see them the first 
thing ?”’ 

“I understood the orders were they were always to 
be on the breakfast-table, sir.” 

“Breakfast-table! When there isn’t any breakfast?” 

“IT understood rz 


“I’m not interested in what you understood.” 





Lucy here nervously interrupted, for Everard 
sounded suddenly very angry, by exclaiming, ‘“‘Antlers !” 
and waving her unpinned-down arm in the direction 
of the walls. 

“Yes,”? said Wemyss, his attention called off the 
parlourmaid, gazing up at his walls with pride. 

“What a lot,” said Lucy. 

‘‘Aren’t there. I always said I’d have a hall with 
antlers in it, and I’ve got it.” He hugged her close 
to his side. “And I’ve got you too,” he said. “I always 
get what I’m determined to get.” . 

“Did you shoot them all yourself?” asked Lucy, 
thinking the parlourmaid would take the opportunity 
to disappear, and a little surprised that she continued 
to stand there. 

“What? The beasts they belonged to? Not I. 
If you want antlers the simple way is to go and buy 
them. Then you get them all at once, and not grad- 
ually. The hall was ready for them all at once, not 
gradually. I got these at Whiteley’s. Kiss me.” 

This sudden end to his remarks startled Lucy, and 
she repeated in her surprise—for there still stood the 
parlourmaid—“‘Kiss you?” 


VERA 151 


“IT haven’t had my birthday kiss yet.” 
“Why, the very first thing when you woke up 
“Not my real birthday kiss in my own home.” 

She looked at the parlourmaid who was quite frankly 
looking at her. Well, if the parlourmaid didn’t mind, 
and Everard didn’t mind, why should she mind? 

She lifted her face and kissed him; but she didn’t 
like kissing him or being kissed in public. What was 


39 





the point of it? Kissing Everard was a great delight 
to her. A mixture of all sorts of wonderful sensations, 
and she loved to do it in different way,—tenderly, 
passionately, lingeringly, dreamily, amusingly, sol- 
emnly; each kind in turn, or in varied combinations. 
But among her varied combinations there was nothing 
that included a parlourmaid. Consequently her kiss 
was of the sort that was to be expected, perfunctory 
and brief, whereupon Wemyss said, ‘Lucy ”? in his 
hurt voice. 

She started. 

“Oh Everard—what is it?” she asked nervously. 

That particular one of his voices always by now 
made her start, for it always took her by surprise. 
Pick her way as carefully as she might among his 
feelings there were always some, apparently, that she 
hadn’t dreamed were there and that she accordingly 
knocked against. How dreadful if she had hurt him 
the very first thing on getting into The Willows! And 
on his birthday too. From the moment he woke 
that morning, all the way down in the train, all the 
way in the fly from the station, she had been unremit- 





152 VERA 


tingly engaged in avoiding hurting him; an activity 
made extra difficult by the unfortunate way her nervous- 
ness about the house at the journey’s end impelled 
her to say the kinds of things she least wanted to. Ir- 
reverent things; such as the silly remark on his house’s 
name. She had got on much better the evening before 
at the house in Lancaster Gate where they had slept, 
because gloomy as it was it anyhow wasn’t The Wil- 
lows. Also there was no trace in it that she could see 
of such a thing as a woman ever having lived in it. 
It was a man’s house; the house of a man who has no 
time for pictures, or interesting books and furniture. 
It was like a club and an office mixed up together, with 
capacious leather chairs and solid tables and Turkey 
carpets and reference books. She found it quite im- 
possible to imagine Vera, or any other woman, in that 
house. Either Vera had spent most of her time at 
The Willows, or every trace of her had been very care- 
fully removed. Therefore Lucy, helped besides by 
extreme fatigue, for she had been sea-sick all the way 
from Dieppe to Newhaven, Wemyss having crossed that 
way because he was fond of the sea, had positively 
been unable to think of Vera in those surroundings 
and had dropped off to sleep directly she got there 
and had slept all night; and of course being asleep she 
naturally hadn’t said anything she oughtn’t to have 
said, so that her first appearance in Lancaster Gate 
was a success; and when she woke next morning, and 
saw Wemyss’s face in such unclouded tranquillity next 
to hers as he still slept, she lay gazing at it with her 


VERA 153 


heart brimming with tender love and vowed that his 
birthday should be as unclouded throughout as his dear 
face was at that moment. She adored him. He was 
her very life. She wanted nothing in the world ex- 
cept for him to be happy. She would watch every 
word. She really must see to it that on this day of 
all days no word should escape her before it had been 
turned round in her head at least three times, and con- 
sidered with the utmost care. Such were her resolu- 
tions in the morning; and here she was not only saying 
the wrong things but doing them. It was because she 
hadn’t expected to be told to kiss him in the presence 
of a parlourmaid. She was always being tripped up 
by the unexpected. She ought by now to have learned 
better. How unfortunate. 

“Oh Everard—what is it? she asked nervously; 
but she knew before he could answer, and throwing her 
objections to public caresses to the winds, for anything 
was better than that he should be hurt at just that 
moment, she put up her free arm and drew his head 
down and kissed him again,—lingeringly this time, a 
kiss of tender, appealing love. What must it be like, 
she thought while she kissed him and her heart yearned 
over him, to be so fearfully sensitive. It made things 
difficult for her, but how much, much more difficult 
for him. And how wonderful the way his sensitiveness 
had developed since marriage. There had been no sign 
of it before. 

Implicit in her kiss was an appeal not to let any- 
thing she said or did spoil his birthday, to forgive her, 


154 VERA 


to understand. And at the back of her mind, quite 
uncontrollable, quite unauthorised ran beneath these 
other thoughts this thought: “I am certainly abject.” 

This time he was quickly placated because of his 
excitement at getting home. “Nobody can hurt me 
as you can,” was all he said. 

“Oh but as though I ever, ever mean to,’ she 
breathed, her arm round his neck. 

Meanwhile the parlourmaid looked on. 

*“Why doesn’t she go?” whispered Lucy, making the 
most of having got his ear. 

“Certainly not,” said Wemyss out loud, raising his 
head. “I might want her. Do you like the hall, 
little Love?” , 

“Very much,” she said, loosing him. 

‘Don’t you think it’s a very fine staircase?” 

“Very fine,” she said. 

He gazed about him with pride, standing in the 
middle of the Turkey carpet holding her close to his 
side, 

“Now look at the window,” he said, turning her 
round when she had had time to absorb the staircase. 
*“Look—isn’t it a jolly window? No nonsense about. 
that window. You can really see out of it, and it really 
lets in light. Vera’—she winced—“‘tried to stuff it 
all up with curtains. She said she wanted colour, or 
something. Having got a beautiful garden to look out 
at, what does she try to do but shut most of it out again 
by putting up curtains.” 

The attempt had evidently not succeeded, for the 


VERA 155 


window, which was as big as a window in the wait- 
ing-room of a London terminus, had nothing to inter- 
fere with it but the hanging cord of a drawn-up brown 
holland blind. Through it Lucy could see the whole 
half of the garden on the right side of the front door 
with the tossing willow hedge, the meadows, and the 
cows. The leafless branches of some creeper beat 
against it and made a loud irregular tapping in the 
pauses of Wemyss’s observations. 

“Plate glass,” he said. 

“Yes,” said Lucy; and something in his voice made 
her add in a tone of admiration, “Fancy.” 

Looking at the window they had their backs to the 
stairs. Suddenly she heard footsteps coming down 
them from the landing above. 

*“Who’s that?” she said quickly, with a little gasp, 
before she could think, before she could stop, not 
turning her head, her eyes staring at the window. 

“Who’s what?” asked Wemyss. “You do think it’s 
a jolly window, don’t you, little Love?”’ 

The footsteps on the stairs stopped, and a gong she 
had noticed at the angle of the turn was sounded. Her 
body, which had shrunk together, relaxed. What a 
fool she was. 

“Lunch,” said Wemyss. ‘Come along—but isn’t it 
a jolly window, little Love?” 

“Very jolly.” 

He turned her round to march her off to the dining- 
room, while the housemaid, who had come down from 


156 VERA 


the landing, continued to beat the gong, though there 
they were obeying it under her very nose. 

“Don’t you think that’s a good place to have a 
gong?” he asked, raising his voice because the gong, 
which had begun quietly, was getting rapidly louder. 
‘Then when you’re upstairs in your sitting-room you'll 
hear it just as distinctly as if you were downstairs. 
Vera i! 

But what he was going to say about Vera was 
drowned this time in the increasing fury of the gong. 

‘“Why doesn’t she leave off ?”? Lucy tried to call out 
to him, straining her voice to its utmost, for the maid 
was very good at the gong and was now extracting 
the dreadfullest din out of it. 

“Eh?” shouted Wemyss. 

In the dining-room, whither they were preceded by 
the parlourmaid who at last had left off standing still 
and had opened the door for them, as Lucy could hear 
the gong continuing to be beaten though muffled now 
by doors and distance, she again said, ““Why doesn’t she 
leave off ?”’ 

Wemyss took out his watch. 

“She will in another fifty seconds,” he said. 

Lucy’s mouth and eyebrows became all inquiry. 

“It is beaten for exactly two and a half minutes 
before every meal,” he explained. 

“Oh?” said Lucy. “Even when we’re visibly col- 
lected ?” 

“She doesn’t know that.” 

“But she saw us.” 





VERA 157 


“But she doesn’t know it officially.” 

“Oh,” said Lucy. 

“T had to make that rule,” said Wemyss, arranging 
his knives and forks more accurately beside his plate, 
“because they would leave off beating it almost as soon 
as they’d begun, and then Vera was late and her excuse 
was that she hadn’t heard. For a time after that I 
used to have it beaten all up the stairs right to the 
door of her sitting-room. Isn’t it a fine gong? Lis- 
ten ” And he raised his hand. 

“Very fine,” said Lucy, who was thoroughly con- 
vinced there wasn’t a finer, more robust gong in ex- 





istence. 
“There. Time’s up,” he said, as three great strokes 
were followed by a blessed silence. 

He pulled out his watch again. “Let’s see. Yes—to 
the tick. You wouldn’t believe the trouble I had to 
get them to keep time.” 

“It’s wonderful,” said Lucy. 

The dining-room was a narrow room full of a table. 
It had a window facing west and a window facing north, 
and in spite of the uninterrupted expanses of plate 
glass was a bleak, dark room. But then the weather 
was bleak and dark, and one saw such a lot of it out 
of the two big windows as one sat at the long table and 
watched the rolling clouds blowing straight towards 
one from the north-west; for Lucy’s place was facing 
the north window, on Wemyss’s left hand. Wemyss 
sat at the end of the table facing the west window. 
The table was so long that if Lucy had sat in the 


158 VERA 


usual seat of wives, opposite her husband, communica- 
tion would have been difficult,—indeed, as she remarked, 
she would have disappeared below the dip of the 
horizon. 

“T like a long table,” said Wemyss to this. “It looks 
so hospitable.” 

“Yes,” said Lucy a little doubtfully, but willing to 
admit that its length at least showed a readiness for 
hospitality. “I suppose it does. Or it would if there 
were people all round it.” 

“People? You don’t mean to say you want people 
already?” 

“Good heavens no,” said Lucy hastily. ‘Of course 
I don’t. Why, of course, Everard, I didn’t mean that,” 
she added, laying her hand on his and smiling at him 
so as to dispel the gathering cloud on his face, and once 
more she flung all thoughts of the parlourmaid to the 
winds. ‘You know I don’t want a soul in the world 
but you.” 

“Well, that’s what I thought,” said Wemyss, molli- 
fied. “I know all I want is you.” 

(Was this same parlourmaid here in Vera’s time? 
Lucy asked herself very privately and unconsciously 
and beneath the concerned attentiveness she was con- 
centrating on Wemyss. ) 

“What lovely kingcups!” she said aloud. 

“Oh yes, there they are—I hadn’t noticed them. 
Yes, aren’t they? They’re my birthday flowers.” And 
he repeated his formula: “It’s my birthday and 
Spring’s.” 


VERA 159 


But Lucy, of course, didn’t know the proper ritual, 
it being her first experience of one of Wemyss’s birth- 
days, besides having wished him his many happy returns 
hours ago when he first opened his eyes and found hers 
gazing at him with love; so all she did was to make 
the natural but unfortunate remark that surely Spring 
began on the 21st of March,—or was it the 25th? 
No, that was Christmas Day—no, she didn’t mean 
that 

“You’re always saying things and then saying you 
didn’t mean them,” interrupted Wemyss, vexed, for he 
thought that Lucy of all people should have recognised 
the allegorical nature of his formula. If it had been 
Vera, now,—but even Vera had managed to understand 
that much. “I wish you would begin with what you 
do mean, it would be so much simpler. What, pray, 
do you mean now?” 

“T can’t think,” said Lucy timidly, for she had 
offended him again, and this time she couldn’t even 
remotely imagine how. 





XVIT 


E got over it, however. There was a par- 
H ticularly well-made soufflé and this helped. 
Also Lucy kept on looking at him very ten- 
derly, and it was the first time she had sat at his 
table in his beloved home, realising the dreams of 
months that she should sit just there with hin, his 
little bobbed-haired Love, and gradually therefore he 
recovered and smiled at her again. 

But what power she had to hurt him, thought 
Wemyss; it was so great because his love for her was 
so great.’ She should be very careful how she wielded 
it. Her Everard was made very sensitive by his love. 

He gazed at her solemnly, thinking this, while the 
plates were being changed. 

“What is it, Everard?” Lucy asked anxiously. 

“Y’m only thinking that I love you,’ he said, laying 
his hand on hers. 

She flushed with pleasure, and her face grew in- 
stantly happy. “My Everard,” she murmured, gazing 
back at him, forgetful in her pleasure of the parlour- 
maid. How dear he was. How silly she was to be so 
much distressed when he was offended. At the core 
he was so sound and simple. At the core he was 
utterly her own dear lover. The rest was mere inci- 
dent, merest indifferent detail. 

160 


VERA 161 


“We'll have coffee in the library,” he said to the 
parlourmaid, getting up when he had finished his lunch 
and walking to the door. “Come along, little Love,” 
he called over his shoulder. 

The library. ... 

“Can’t we—don’t we—have coffee in the hall?” 
asked Lucy, getting up slowly. 

“No,” said Wemyss, who had paused before an en- 
larged photograph that hung on the wall between the 
two windows, enlarged to life size. 

He examined it a moment, and then drew his finger 
obliquely across the glass from top to bottom. It then 
became evident that the picture needed dusting. 

“Look,” he said to the parlourmaid, pointing. 

The parlourmaid looked. 

“T notice you don’t say anything,” he said to her 
after a silence in which she continued to look, and Lucy, 
taking aback again, stood uncertain by the chair she 
had got up from. “I don’t wonder. There’s nothing 
you can possibly say to excuse such carelessness.” 

“Lizzie 





” began the parlourmaid. 

“Don’t put it on to Lizzie.” 

The parlourmaid ceased putting it on to Lizzie and 
was dumb. 

“Come along, little Love,” said Wemyss, turning to 
Lucy and holding out his hand. “It makes one pretty 
sick, doesn’t it, to see that not even one’s own father 
gets dusted.” 

“Ts that your father?” asked Lucy, hurrying to his 
side and offering no opinion about dusting. 


162 VERA 


It could have been no one else’s. It was Wemyss 
grown very enormous, Wemyss grown very old, Wemyss 
displeased. The photograph had been so arranged that 
wherever you moved to in the room Wemyss’s father 
watched you doing it. He had been watching Lucy 
from between those two windows all through her first 
lunch, and must, flashed through Lucy’s brain, have 
watched Vera like that all through her last one. 

“How long has he been there?” she asked, looking 
up into Wemyss’s father’s displeased eyes which looked 
straight back into hers. 

“Been there?” repeated Wemyss, drawing her away 
for he wanted his coffee. “How can I remember? Ever 
since I’ve lived here, I should think. He died five 
years ago. He was a wonderful old man, nearly ninety. 
He used to stay here a lot.” | 

Opposite this picture hung another, next to the door 
that led into the hall,—also a photograph enlarged to 
life-size. Lucy had noticed neither of these pictures 
when she came in, because the light from the windows 
was in her eyes. Now, turning to go out through the 
door led by Wemyss, she was faced by this one. 

It was Vera. She knew at once; and if she hadn’t 
she would have known the next minute, because he 
told her. 

“Vera,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, as it were 
introducing them. 

“Vera,” repeated Lucy under her breath; and she 
and Vera—for this photograph too followed one about 
with its eyes—stared at each other. 


VERA 163 


It must have been taken about twelve years earlier, 
judging from the clothes. She was standing, and in a 
day dress that yet had a train to it trailing on the car- 
pet, and loose, floppy sleeves and a high collar. She 
looked very tall, and had long thin fingers. Her dark 
hair was drawn up from her ears and piled on the top 
of her head. Her face was thin and seemed to be 
chiefly eyes,—very big dark eyes that stared out of 
the absurd picture in a kind of astonishment, and her 
mouth had a little twist in it as though she were trying 
not to laugh. 

Lucy looked at her without moving. So this was 
Vera. Of course. She had known, though she had 
never constructed any image of her in her mind, had 
carefully avoided doing it, that she would be like 
that. Only older; the sort of Vera she must have been 
at forty when she died,—not attractive like that, not a 
young woman. To Lucy at twenty-two, forty seemed 
very old; at least, if you were a woman. In regard to 
men, since she had fallen in love with some one of forty- 
five who was certainly the youngest thing she had ever 
come across, she had rearranged her ideas of age, but 
she still thought forty very old for a woman. Vera had 
been thin and tall and dark in her idea of her, just as 
this Vera was thin and tall and dark; but thin bonily, 
tall stoopingly, and her dark hair was turning grey. 
In her idea of her, too, she was absent-minded and 
not very intelligent; indeed, she was rather trouble- 
somely unintelligent, doing obstinate, foolish things, 
and at last doing that fatal, obstinate, foolish thing 


164 VERA 


which so dreadfully ended her. This Vera was certainly 
intelligent. You couldn’t have eyes like that and be a 
fool. And the expression of her mouth,—what had 
she been trying not to laugh at that day? Did she 
know she was going to be enlarged and hang for years 
in the bleak dining-room facing her father-in-law, each 
of them eyeing the other from their walls, while three 
times a day the originals sat down beneath their own 
pictures at the long table and ate? Perhaps she 
laughed, thought Lucy, because else she might have 
cried ; only that would have been silly, and she couldn’t 
have been silly,—not with those eyes, not with those 
straight, fine eyebrows. But would she, herself, pres- 
ently be photographed too and enlarged and hung 
there? There was room next to Vera, room for just 
one more before the sideboard began. How very odd 
it would be if she were hung up next to Vera, and every 
day three times as she went out of the room was faced 
by Everard’s wives. And how quaint to watch one’s 
clothes as the years went by leaving off being pretty 
and growing more absurd. Really for such purposes 
one ought to be just wrapped round in a shroud. 
Fashion didn’t touch shrouds; they always stayed the 
same. Besides, how suitable, thought Lucy, gazing 
into her dead predecessor’s eyes; one would only be 
taking time by the forelock.... 

“Come along,” said Wemyss, drawing her away, “I 
want my coffee. Don’t you think it’s a good idea,” he 
went on, as he led her down the hall to the library door, 


VERA 165 


*“*to have life-sized photographs instead of those idiotic 
portraits that are never the least like people?” 

“Oh, a very good idea,” said Lucy mechanically, 
bracing herself for the hbrary. There was only one 
room in the house she dreaded going into more than 
the library, and that was the sitting-room on the top 
floor,—her sitting-room and Vera’s. 

“Next week we'll go to a photographer’s in London 
and have my little girl done,” said Wemyss, pushing 
open the library door, ‘‘and then I’ll have her exactly 
as God made her, without some artist idiot or other 
coming butting-in with his idea of her. God’s idea of 
her is good enough for me. They won’t have to enlarge 
much,” he laughed, “to get yow life-size, you midge. 
Vera was five foot ten. Now isn’t this a fine room? 
Look—there’s the river. Isn’t it jolly being so close to 
it? Come round here—don’t knock against my writing- 
table, now. Look—there’s only the towpath between 
the river and the garden. Lord, what a beastly day. 
It might just as easily have been a beautiful spring 
day and us having our coffee out on the terrace. Don’t 
you think this is a beautiful look-out,—so typically 
English with the beautiful green lawn and the bit of 
lush grass along the towpath, and the river. There’s 
no river like it in the world, is there, little Love? Say 
you think it’s the most beautiful river in the world”— 
he hugged her close—“say you think it’s a hundred 
times better than that beastly French one we got so 
sick of with all those chateaux.” 

“Oh, a hundred times better,” said Lucy. 


166 VERA 


They were standing at the window with his arm 
round her shoulder. There was just room for them 
between it and the writing-table. Outside was the 
flagged terrace, and then a very green lawn with worms 
and blackbirds on it and a flagged path down the middle 
leading to a little iron gate. There was no willow 
hedge along the river end of the square garden, so as 
not to interrupt the view,—only the iron railings and 
wire-netting. Terra cotta vases, which later on would 
be a blaze of geraniums, Wemyss explained, stood at 
intervals on each side of the path. The river, swollen 
and brown, slid past Wemyss’s frontage very quickly 
that day, for there had been much rain. The clouds 
scudding across the sky before the wind were not in 
such a hurry but that every now and then they let loose 
a violent gust of rain, soaking the flags of the terrace 
again just as the wind had begun to dry them up. How 
could he stand there, she thought, holding her tight so 
that she couldn’t get away, making her look out at the 
very place on those flags not two yards off... . 

But the next minute she thought how right he really 
was, how absolutely the only way this was to do the 
thing. Perfect simplicity was the one way to meet this 
situation successfully; and she herself was so far from 
simplicity that here she was shrinking, not able to 
bear to look, wanting only to hide her face,—oh, 
he was wonderful, and she was the most ridiculous of 
fools. 

She pressed very close to him, and put up her face 


VERA 167 


to his, shutting her eyes, for so she shut out the desolat- 
ing garden with its foreground of murderous flags. 

“What is it, little Love?” asked Wemyss. 

“Kiss me,”? she said; and he laughed and kissed her, 
but hastily, because he wanted her to go on admiring 
the view. | 

She still, however, held up her face. ‘Kiss my eyes,” 
she whispered, keeping them shut. ‘’They’re tired i 

He laughed again, but with a slight impatience, and 
kissed her eyes; and then, suddenly struck by her little 
blind face so close to his, the strong light from the big 
window showing all its delicate curves and delicious 
softnesses, his Lucy’s face, his own little wife’s, he 
kissed her really, as she loved him to kiss her, becoming 
absorbed only in his love. 

“Oh, I love you, love you ” murmured Lucy, 
clinging to him, making secret vows of sensibleness, of 
wholesomeness, of a determined, unfailing future 








simplicity. 

*““Aren’t we happy,” he said, pausing in his kisses to 
gaze down at what was now his face, for was it not 
much more his than hers? Of course it was his. She 
never saw it, except when she specially went to look, 
but he saw it all the time; she only had duties in regard 
to it, but he was on the higher plane of only having 
joys. She washed it, but he kissed it. And he kissed 
it when he liked and as much as ever he liked. “‘Isn’t 
it wonderful being married,” he said, gazing down at 
this delightful thing that was his very own for ever. 


168 VERA 


“OQh—wonderful!” murmured Lucy, opening her eyes 
and gazing into his. 

Her face broke into a charming smile. ‘You have 
the dearest eyes,” she said, putting up her finger and 
gently tracing his eyebrows with it. 

Wemyss’s eyes, full at that moment of love and 
pride, were certainly dear eyes, but a noise at the other 
end of the room made Lucy jump so in his arms, gave 
her apparently such a fright, that when he turned his 
head to see who it was daring to interrupt them, daring 
to startle his little girl like that, and beheld the parlour- 
maid, his eyes weren’t dear at all but very angry. 

The parlourmaid had come in with the coffee; and 
seeing the two interlaced figures against the light of the 
big window had pulled up short, uncertain what to do. 
This pulling up had jerked a spoon off its saucer on to 
the floor with a loud rattle because of the floor not 
having a carpet on it and being of polished oak, and it 
was this noise that made Lucy jump so excessively that 
her jump actually made Wemyss jump too. 

In the parlourmaid’s untrained phraseology there 
had been a good deal of billing and cooing during 
luncheon, and even in the hall before luncheon there 
were examples of it, but what she found going on in the 
library was enough to make anybody stop dead and 
upset things,—it was such, she said afterwards in the 
kitchen, that if she didn’t know for a fact that they 
were really married she wouldn’t have believed it. 
Married people in the parlourmaid’s experience didn’t 
behave like that. What affection there was was ex- 


VERA 169 


hibited before, and not after, marriage. And she went 
on to describe the way in which Wemyss—thus briefly 
and irreverently did they talk of their master in the 
kitchen—had flown at her for having come into the 
library. “After telling me to,” she said. ‘After say- 
ing, ‘We'll ’ave coffee in the library.’” And they all 
agreed, as they had often before agreed, that if it 
weren’t that he was in London half the time they 
wouldn’t stay in the place five minutes, 

Meanwhile Wemyss and Lucy were sitting side by 
side in two enormous chairs facing the unlit library fire 
drinking their coffee. The fire was lit only in the 
evenings, explained Wemyss, after the Ist of April; 
the weather ought to be warm enough by then to do 
without fires in the daytime, and if it wasn’t it was its 
own lookout. 

“Why did you jump so?” he asked. “You gave me 
such a start. I couldn’t think what was the matter.” 

“TI don’t know,” said Lucy, faintly flushing. “Per- 
haps”—she smiled at him over the arm of the enormous 
chair in which she almost totally disappeared—‘be- 
cause the maid caught us.’’ 

“Caught us?” 

“Being so particularly affectionate.” 

“T like that,” said Wemyss. “Fancy feeling guilty 
because you’re being affectionate to your own hus- 
band.” 

“Oh, well,” laughed Lucy, “don’t forget I haven’t 
had him long.” 

“You’re such a complicated little thing. I shall 


170 VERA 


have to take you seriously in hand and teach you to be 
natural. I can’t have you having all sorts of finicking 
ideas about not doing this and not doing the other 
before servants, Servants don’t matter. I never con- 
sider them.” 

“TY wish you had considered the poor parlourmaid,” 
said Lucy, seeing that he was in an unoffended frame of 
mind. “Why did you give her such a dreadful 
scolding?” 

“Why? Because she made you jump so. You 
couldn’t have jumped more if you had thought it was 
a ghost. I won’t have your flesh being made to creep.” 

“But it crept much worse when I heard the things you 
said to her.”’ 

‘“‘Nonsense. ‘These people have to be kept in order. 
What did the woman mean by coming in like that?” 

“Why, you told her to bring us coffee.” 

“But I didn’t tell her to make an infernal noise by 
dropping spoons all over the place.” 

“That was because she got just as great a fright 
when she saw us as I did when I heard her.” 

“I don’t care what she got. Her business is not 
to drop things. That’s what I pay her for. But look 
here—don’t you go thinking such a lot of tangled-up 
things and arguing. Do, for goodness’ sake, try and be 
simple.” 

“T feel very simple,” said Lucy, smiling and putting 
out her hand to him, for his face was clouding. “Do 
you know, Everard, I believe what’s the matter with 
me is that I’m too simple.” 


SS a ee eee ee ee ee 


fi 
9° age ATR ee 


VERA 171 


Wemyss roared, and forgot how near he was getting 
to being hurt. “You simple! You’re the most com- 
plicated og 

“No Tm not. TPve got the untutored mind and 
uncontrolled emotions of a savage. ‘That’s really why 
I jumped.” : 

“Lord,” laughed Wemyss, “listen to her how she 
talks. Anybody might think she was clever, saying 





such big long words, if they didn’t know she was just 
her Everard’s own little wife. Come here, my little 
savage—come and sit on your husband’s knee and tell 
him all about it.” 

He held out his arms, and Lucy got up and went 


into them and he rocked her and said, “There, there— 
33 





was it a little untutored savage then 

But she didn’t tell him all about it, first because by 
now she knew that to tell him all about anything was 
asking for trouble, and second because he didn’t really 
want to know. Everard, she was beginning to realise 
with much surprise, preferred not to know. He was 
- not merely incurious as to other people’s ideas and opin- 
ions, he definitely preferred to be unconscious of them. 

This was a great contrast to the restless curiosity 
and interest of her father and his friends, to their in- 
satiable hunger for discussion, for argument; and it 
much surprised Lucy. Discussion was the very salt 
of life for them,—a tireless exploration of each other’s 
ideas, a clashing of them together, and out of that 
clashing the creation of fresh ones. To Everard, Lucy 
was beginning to perceive, discussion merely meant 


172 VERA 


contradiction, and he disliked contradiction, he dis- 
liked even difference of opinion. ‘“There’s only one way 
of looking at a thing, and that’s the right way,” as he 
said, “so what’s the good of such a lot of talk?” 

The right way was his way; and though he seemed 
by his direct, unswerving methods to succeed in living 
mentally in a great calm, and though after the fevers 
of her father’s set this was to her immensely restful, 
was it really a good thing? Didn’t it cut one off from 
growth? Didn’t it shut one in an isolation? Wasn’t 
it, frankly, rather like death? Besides, she had doubts 
as to whether it were true that there was only one way 
of looking at a thing, and couldn’t quite believe that 
his way was invariably the right way. But what did it 
matter after all, thought Lucy, snuggled up on his knee 
with one arm round his neck, compared to the great, 
glorious fact of their love? That at least was indis- 
putable and splendid. As to the rest, truth would go 
on being truth whether Everard saw it or not; and if 
she were not going to be able to talk over things with 
him she could anyhow kiss him, and how sweet that was, 
thought Lucy. They understood each other perfectly 
when they kissed. What, indeed, when such sweet 
means of communion existed, was the good of a lot 
of talk? 

“T believe you’re asleep,” said Wemyss, looking down 
at the face on his breast. 

“Sound,” said Lucy, smiling, her eyes shut. 

“My baby.” 

“My Everard.” 


XVIII 


When that was finished he put her off his knee, 
and said he was now ready to gratify her im- 
patience and show her everything; they would go over 
the house first, and then the garden and outbuildings. 

No woman was ever less impatient than Lucy. 
However, she pulled her hat straight and tried to seem 
all readiness and expectancy. She wished the wind 
wouldn’t howl so. What an extraordinary dreary place 
the library was. Well, any place would be dreary at 
half-past two o’clock on such an afternoon, without a 
fire and with the rain beating against the window, and 
that dreadful terrace just outside. 

Wemyss stooped to knock out the ashes of his pipe 
on the bars of the empty grate, and Lucy carefully 
kept her head turned away from the window and the 
terrace towards the other end of the room. The other 
end was filled with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, 
and the books, in neat rows and uniform editions, were 
packed so tightly in the shelves that no one but an 
unusually determined reader would have the energy to 
wrench one out. Reading was evidently not encouraged, 
for not only were the books shut in behind glass doors, 
but the doors were kept locked and the key hung on 

173 


Br this only lasted as long as his pipe lasted. 


174 VERA 


Wemyss’s watch chain. Lucy discovered this when 
Wemyss, putting his pipe in his pocket, took her by 
the arm and walked her down the room to admire the 
shelves. One of the volumes caught her eye, and she 
tried to open the glass door to take it out and look at 
it. ‘‘Why,” she said surprised, “‘it’s locked.” 

“Of course,” said Wemyss. 

“Why but then nobody can get at them.” 

“Precisely.” 

“But 5 “1 

“People are so untrustworthy about books, I took 
pains to arrange mine myself, and they’re all in first- 
class bindings and I don’t want them taken out and 
left lying anywhere by Tom, Dick, and Harry. If any 
one wants to read they can come and ask me. Then I 
know exactly what is taken, and can see that it is put 
back.” And he held up the key on his watch chain. 

“But doesn’t that rather discourage people?” asked 
Lucy, who was accustomed to the most careless famili- 
arity, in intercourse with books, to books loose every- 
where, books overflowing out of their shelves, books in 
every room, instantly accessible books, friendly books, 
books used to being read aloud, with their hospitable 
pages falling open at a touch. 

“All the better,” said Wemyss. “JZ don’t want 
anybody to read my books.”’ 

Lucy laughed, though she was dismayed inside. 
“Oh Everard—” she said, “not even me?” 

“You? You’re different. You’re my own little girl. 
Whenever you want to, all you’ve got to do is to come 





VERA 175 


and say, ‘Everard, your Lucy wants to read,’ and 
Tl unlock the bookcase.”’ 

“But—I shall be afraid I may be disturbing you.” 

“People who love each other can’t ever disturb each 
other.” 

“That’s true,” said Lucy. 

“And they shouldn’t ever be afraid of it.” 

“I suppose they shouldn’t,” said Lucy. 

“So be simple, and when you want a thing just 
say so.” 

Lucy said she would, and promised with many kisses 
to be simple, but she couldn’t help privately thinking 
it a difficult way of getting at a book. 

“Macaulay, Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, British 
Poets, English Men of Letters, Encyclopedia Britan- 
ntica—I think there’s about everything,” said Wemyss, 
going over the gilt names on the backs of the volumes 
with much satisfaction as he stood holding her in front 
of them. “Whiteley’s did it for me. I said I had room 
for so and so many of such and such sizes of the best 
modern writers in good bindings. I think they did it 
very well, don’t you little Love?” 

“Very well,” said Lucy, eyeing the shelves doubtfully. 

She was of those who don’t like the feel of prize 
books in their hands, and all Wemyss’s books might 
have been presented as prizes to deserving schoolboys. 
They were handsome; their edges—she couldn’t see 
them, but she was sure—were marbled. They wouldn’t 
open easily, and one’s thumbs would have to do a lot 
of tiring holding while one’s eyes tried to peep at the 


176 VERA 


words tucked away towards the central crease. These 
were books with which one took no liberties. She 
couldn’t imagine idly turning their pages in some lazy 
position out on the grass. Besides, their pages wouldn’t 
be idly turned; they would be, she was sure, obstinate 
with expensiveness, stiff with the leather and gold of 
their covers. 

Lucy stared at them, thinking all this so as not to 
think other things. What she wanted to shut out was 
the wind sobbing up and down that terrace behind her, 
and the consciousness of the fierce intermittent squalls 
of rain beating on its flags, and the certainty that up- 
stairs. . . . Had Everard no imagination, she thought, 
with a sudden flare of rebellion, that he should expect 
her to use and to like using the very sitting-room where 





Vera 

With a quick shiver she grabbed at her thoughts 
and caught them just in time. 

“Do you like Macaulay?” she asked, lingering in 
front of the bookcase, for he was beginning to move her 
off towards the door. 

“T haven’t read him,” said Wemyss, still moving her. 

“Which of all these do you like best?” she asked, 
holding back, 

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Wemyss, pausing a mo- 
ment, pleased by her evident interest in his books. “I 
haven’t much time for reading, you must remember. 
I’m a busy man. By the time I’ve finished my day’s 
work, I’m not inclined for much more than the evening 
paper and a game of bridge.” 


VERA 177 


“But what will you do with me, who don’t play 
bridge?” | 

“Lord, you don’t suppose I shall want to play bridge 
now that I’ve got you?” he said. ‘‘All I shall want is 
just to sit and look at you.” 

She turned red with swift pleasure, and laughed, 
and hugged the arm that was thrust through hers 
leading her to the door. How much she adored him; 
when he said dear, absurd, simple things like that, how 
much she adored him! 

“Come upstairs now and take off your hat,” said 
Wemyss. “I want to see what my bobbed hair looks 
like in my home. Besides, aren’t you dying to see our 
bedroom?” 

“Dying,” said Lucy, going up the oak staircase with 
a stout, determined heart. 

The bedroom was over the library, and was the 
same size and with the same kind of window. Where 
the bookcase stood in the room below, stood the bed: 
a double, or even a treble, bed, so very big was it, facing 
the window past which Vera—it was no use, she couldn’t 
get away from Vera—having slept her appointed num- 
ber of nights, fell and was finished. But she wasn’t 
finished. If only she had slipped away out of memory, 
out of imagination, thought Lucy . . . but she hadn’t, 
she hadn’t—and this was her room, and that intelligent- 
eyed thin thing had slept in it for years and years, and 
for years and years the looking-glass had reflected her 
while she had dressed and undressed, dressed and un- 
dressed before it—regularly, day after day, year after 


178 VERA 


year—oh, what a trouble—and her thin long hands had 
piled up her hair—Lucy could see her sitting there 
piling it on the top of her small head—sitting at the 
dressing-table in the window past which she was at last 
to drop lke a_ stone—horribly—ignominiously—all 
anyhow—and everything in the room had been hers, 
every single thing in it had been Vera’s including 
Ev 

Lucy made a violent lunge after her thoughts and 





strangled them. 

Meanwhile Wemyss had shut the door and was stand- 
ing looking at her without moving. 

“Well?” he said. 

She turned to him nervously, her eyes still wide with 
the ridiculous things she had been thinking. 

“Well?” he said again. 

She supposed he meant her to praise the room, so 
she hastily began, saying what a good view there must 
be on a fine day, and how very comfortable it was, 
such a nice big looking-glass—she loved a big looking- 
glass—and such a nice sofa—she loved a nice sofa— 
and what a very big bed—and what a lovely carpet 

“Well?” was all Wemyss said when her words came 





to an end. 
‘“‘What is it, Everard?” 
“I’m waiting,” he said. 
“Waiting?” 
“For my kiss.” 
She ran to him. 
“Yes,” he said, when she had kissed him, looking 


VERA 179 


down at her solemnly, “JZ don’t forget these things, I 
don’t forget that this is the first time my own wife 
and I have stood together in our very own bedroom.” 

“But Everard—I didn’t forget—I only s 

She cast about for something to say, her arms still 
round his neck, for the last thing she could have told 
him was what she had been thinking—oh, how he would 
have scolded her for being morbid, and oh, how right 
he would have been!—and she ended by saying as 





lamely and as unfortunately as she had said it in the 
chateau of Amboise—“I only didn’t remember.” 

Luckily this time his attention had already wandered 
away from her. “Isn’t it a jolly room?” he said. 
*‘Who’s got far and away the best bedroom in Strorley? 
And who’s got a sitting-room all for herself, just as 
jolly? And who spoils his httle woman?” 

Before she could answer, he loosened her hand from 
his neck and said, ‘‘Come and look at yourself in the 
glass. Come and see how small you are compared to 
the other things in the room.” And with his arms 
round her shoulders he led her to the dressing-table. 

“The other things?” laughed Lucy; but like a flame 
the thought was leaping in her brain, “Now what shall 
I do if when I jook into this I don’t see myself but Vera? 
It’s accustomed to Vera... .” 

“Why, she’s shutting her eyes. Open them, little 
Love,’ said Wemyss, standing with her before the glass 
and seeing in it that though he held her in front of it 
she wasn’t looking at the picture of wedded love he and 
she made, but had got her eyes tight shut. 


180 VERA 


With his free hand he took off her hat and threw it 
on to the sofa; then he laid his head on hers and said, 
**Now look.” 

Lucy obeyed; and when she saw the sweet picture 
in the glass the face of the girl looking at her broke 
into its funny, charming smile, for Everard at that 
moment was at his dearest, Everard boyishly loving her, 
with his good-looking, unlined face so close to hers 
and his proud eyes gazing at her. He and she seemed 
to set each other off; they were becoming to each other. 

Smiling at him in the glass, a smile tremulous with 
tenderness, she put up her hand and stroked his face. 
“Do you know who you’ve married?” she asked, ad- 
dressing the man in the glass. 

“Yes,” said Wemyss, addressing the girl in the glass. 

“No you don’t,” she said. “But Ill tell you. You’ve 
married the completest of fools.” 

“Now what has the little thing got into its head this 
time?” he said, kissing her hair, and watching himself 
doing it. 

“Everard, you must help me,” she murmured, holding 
his face tenderly against hers. ‘Please, my beloved, 
help me, teach me——” 

“That, Mrs. Wemyss, is a very proper attitude in a 
wife,” he said. And the four people laughed at each 
other, the two Lucys a little quiveringly. 

“Now come and [’ll introduce you.to your sitting- 
room,” he said, disengaging himself. ‘‘We’ll have tea 
up there. The view is really magnificent.” 


XIX 


HE wind made more noise than ever at the top 
of the house, and when Wemyss tried to open 
the door to Vera’s sitting-room it blew back 

on him. 

“Well ’'m damned,” he said, giving it a great shove. 

“Why?” asked Lucy nervously. 

“Come in, come in,” he said impatiently, pressing 
the door open and pulling her through. 

There was a great flapping of blinds and rattling of 
blind cords, a whirl of sheets of notepaper, an extra 
wild shriek of the wind, and then Wemyss, hanging on 
to the door, shut it and the room quieted down. 

“That slattern Lizzie!’ he exclaimed, striding across 
to the fireplace and putting his finger on the bell-button 
and keeping it there. 

“What has she done?” asked Lucy, standing where 
he had left her just inside the door. 

*Done? Can’t you see?” 

“You mean”—she could hardly get herself to men- 
tion the fatal thing—“‘you mean—the window?” 

“On a day like this!” 

He continued to press the bell. It was a very loud 
bell, for it rang upstairs as well as down in order to 
be sure of catching Lizzie’s ear in whatever part of the 

181 


182 VERA 


house she might be endeavouring to evade it, and Lucy, 
as she listened to its strident, persistent summons of a 
Lizzie who didn’t appear, felt more and more on edge, 
felt at last that to listen and wait any longer was 
unbearable. 

““Won’t you wear it out?” she asked, after some mo- 
ments of nothing happening and Wemyss still ringing. 

He didn’t answer. He didn’t look at her. His 
finger remained steadily on the button. His face was 
extraordinarily like the old man’s in the enlarged 
photograph downstairs. Lucy wished for only two 
things at that moment, one was that Lizzie shouldn’t 
come, and the other was that if she did she herself 
might be allowed to go and be somewhere else. 

““Hadn’t—hadn’t the window better be shut?” she 
suggested timidly presently, while he still went on ring- 
ing and saying nothing—“else when Lizzie opens the 
door won’t all the things blow about again?” 

He didn’t answer, and went on ringing. 

Of all the objects in the world that she could think 
of, Lucy most dreaded and shrank from that window; 
nevertheless she began to feel that as Everard was 
engaged with the bell and apparently wouldn’t leave 
it, it behoved her to put into practice her resolution not 
to be a fool but to be direct and wholesome, and go 
and shut it herself. There it was, the fatal window, 
huge as the one in the bedroom below and the one in 
the library below that, yawning wide open above its 
murderous low sill, with the rain flying in on every fresh 
gust of wind and wetting the floor and the cushions of 


VERA 183 


the sofa and even, as she could see, those sheets of 
notepaper off the writing-table that had flown in her 
face when she came in and were now lying scattered at 
her feet. Surely the right thing to do was to shut the 
window before Lizzie opened the door and caused a 
second convulsion? Everard couldn’t because he was 
ringing the bell. She could and she would; yes, she 
would do the right thing, and at the same time be both 
simple and courageous. 

“T’ll shut it,” she said, taking a step forward. 

She was arrested by Wemyss’s voice. ‘‘Confound 
it!” he cried. ‘‘Can’t you leave it alone?”’ 

She stopped dead. He had never spoken to her 
like that before. She had never heard that voice before. 
It seemed to hit her straight on the heart. 

“Don’t interfere,’ he said, very loud. 

She was frozen where she stood. 

‘‘Tiresome woman,” he said, still ringing. 

She looked at him. He was looking at her. 

“Who?” she breathed. 

Vou.’ 

Her heart seemed to stop beating. She gave a little 
gasp, and turned her head to right and left like some- 
thing trapped, something searching for escape. 
Everard—where was her Everard? Why didn’t he 
come and take care of her? Come and take her away— 
out of that room—out of that room 

There were sounds of steps hurrying along the 
passage, and then there was a great scream of the wind 
and a great whirl of the notepaper and a great blowing 





184 VERA 


up on end of her forehead of her short hair, and Lizzie 
was there panting on the threshold. 


“I’m sorry, sir,” she panted, her hand on her chest, 
399 





“T was changing my dress 

“Shut the door, can’t you?” cried Wemyss, about 
whose ears, too, notepaper was flying. ‘Hold on to it 
—don’t let it go, damn you!” 

““Oh—oh ” gasped Lucy, stretching out her 
hands as though to keep something off, “I think I—I 
think [ll go downstairs :: 

And before Wemyss realised what she was doing, she 
had turned and slipped through the door Lizzie was 
struggling with and was gone. 

“Lucy!? he shouted, “Lucy! Come back at once 
But the wind was too much for Lizzie, and the door 
dragged itself out of her hands and crashed to. 

As though the devil were after her Lucy ran along 
the passage. Down the stairs she flew, down past the 
bedroom landing, down past the gong landing, down 
into the hall and across it to the front door, and tried 
to pull it open, and found it was bolted, and tugged 
and tugged at the bolts, tugged frantically, getting 
them undone at last, and rushing out on to the steps. 

There an immense gust of rain caught her full in 
the face. Splash—bang—she was sobered. The rain 
splashed on her as though a bucket were being emptied 
at her, and the door had banged behind her shutting 
her out. Suddenly horrified at herself she turned 
quickly, as frantic to get in again as she had been to 
get out. What was she doing? Where was she running 








199 


VERA 185 


to? She must get in, get in—before Everard could 
come after her, before he could find her standing there 
like a drenched dog outside his front door. The wind 
whipped her wet hair across her eyes. Where was the 
handle? She couldn’t find it. Her hair wouldn’t keep 
out of her eyes; her thin serge skirt blew up like a 
balloon and got in the way of her trembling fingers 
searching along the door. She must get in—before he 
came—what had possessed her? Everard—he couldn’t 
have meant—he didn’t mean—what would he think— 
what would he think—oh, where was that handle? 

Then she heard heavy footsteps on the other side of 
the door, and Wemyss’s voice, still very loud, saying 
to somebody he had got with him, “Haven’t I given 
strict orders that this door is to be kept bolted?”— 
and then the sound of bolts being shot. 

“Everard! Everard!’ Lucy cried, beating on the 
door with both hands, “I’m here—out here—let me in— 
Everard! Everard!” 

But he evidently heard nothing, for his footsteps 
went away again. 

Snatching her hair out of her eyes, she looked about 
for the bell and reached up to it and pulled it violently. 
What she had done was terrible. She must get in at 
once, face the parlourmaid’s astonishment, run to 
Everard. She couldn’t imagine his thoughts. Where 
did he suppose she was? He must be searching the 
house for her. He would be dreadfully upset. Why 
didn’t the parlourmaid come? Was she changing her 
dress too? No—she had waited at lunch all ready in 


186 VERA 
her black afternoon clothes. ‘Then why didn’t she 


come? 

Lucy pulled the bell again and again, at last keeping 
it down, using up its electricity as squanderously as 
Wemyss had used it upstairs. She was wet to the skin 
by this time, and you wouldn’t have recognised her 
pretty hair, all dark now and sticking together in lank 
strands. 

Everard—why, of course—Everard had only spoken 
like that out of fear—fear and love. The window— 
of course he would be terrified lest she too, trying to 
shut that fatal window, that great heavy fatal window, 
should slip. . . . Oh, of course, of course—how could 
she have misunderstood—in moments of danger, of 
dreadful anxiety for one’s heart’s beloved, one did speak 
sharply, one did rap out commands. It was because 
he loved her so much. . . . Oh, how lunatic of her to 
have misunderstood! 

At last she heard some one coming, and she let go 
of the bell and braced herself to meet the astonished 
gaze of the parlourmaid with as much dignity as was 
possible in one who only too well knew she must be 
looking like a drowning cat, but the footsteps grew 
heavy as they got nearer, and it was Wemyss who, after 
pulling back the bolts, opened the door. 

“Oh Everard!” Lucy exclaimed, running in, pursued 
to the last by the pelting rain, “I’m so glad it’s you— 
oh I’m so sorry I——” 

Her voice died away; she had seen his face. 
He stooped to bolt the lower bolt. 


VERA 187 


“Don’t be angry, darling Everard,” she whispered, 
laying her arm on his stooping shoulder. 

Having finished with the bolt Wemyss straightened 
himself, and then, putting up his hand to the arm still 
round his shoulder, he removed it. ‘‘You’ll make my 
coat wet,” he said; and walked away to the lbrary 
door and went in and shut it. 

For a moment she stood where he had left her, 
collecting her scattered senses; then she went after 
him. Wet or not wet, soaked and dripping as she was, 
ridiculous scarecrow with her clinging clothes, her lank 
hair, she must go after him, must instantly get the 
horror of misunderstanding straight, tell him how she 
had meant only to help over that window, tell him how 
she had thought he was saying dreadful things to her 
when he was really only afraid for her safety, tell him 
how silly she had been, silly, silly, not to have followed 
his thoughts quicker, tell him he must forgive her, be 
patient with her, help her, because she loved him so 
much and she knew—oh, she knew—how much he loved 
Hoy Daa 

Across the hall ran Lucy, the whole of her one welter 
of anxious penitence and longing and love, and when 
she got to the door and turned the handle it was locked. 

He had locked her out, 


XX 


ER hand slid slowly off the knob. She stood 
H quite still. How could he. ... And she 
knew now that he had bolted the front door 
knowing she was out in the rain. How could he? Her 
body was motionless as she stood staring at the locked 
door, but her brain was a rushing confusion of ques- 
tions. Why? Why? This couldn’t be Everard. Who 
was this man—pitiless, cruel? Not Everard. Not her 
lover. Where was he, her lover and husband? Why 
didn’t he come and take care of her, and not let her be 
frightened by this strange man... . 

She heard a chair being moved inside the room, 
and then she heard the creak of leather as Wemyss sat 
down in it, and then there was the rustle of a news- 
paper being opened. He was actually settling down 
to read a newspaper while she, his wife, his love— 
wasn’t he always telling her she was his little LoveP— 
was breaking her heart outside the locked door. Why, 
but Everard—she and Everard; they understood each 
other; they had laughed, played together, talked 
nonsense, been friends... . 

For an instant she had an impulse to cry out and 
beat on the door, not to care who heard, not to care 
that the whole house should come and gather round her 

188 


VERA 189 


naked misery; but she was stopped by a sudden new 
wisdom. It shuddered down on her heart, a wisdom 
she had never known or needed before, and held her 
quiet. At all costs there mustn’t be two of them doing 
these things, at all costs these things mustn’t be 
doubled, mustn’t have echoes. If Everard was like this 
he must be like it alone. She must wait. She must 
sit quiet till he had finished. Else—but oh, he couldn’t 
be like it, it couldn’t be true that he didn’t love her. 
Yet if he did love her, how could he ... how could 
BOs e's 

She leaned her forehead against the door and began 
softly to cry. Then, afraid that she might after all 
burst out into loud, disgraceful sobbing, she turned and 
went upstairs. 

But where could she go? Where in the whole house 
was any refuge, any comfort? ‘The only person who 
could have told her anything, who could have explained, 
who knew, was Vera. Yes—she would have understood. 
Yes, yes—Vera. She would go to Vera’s room, get as: 
close to her mind as she could,—search, find something,, 
some clue... . 

It seemed now to Lucy, as she hurried upstairs, that 
the room in the house she had most shrunk from was. 
the one place where she might hope to find comfort. 
Oh, she wasn’t frightened any more. Everything was 
trying to frighten her, but she wasn’t going to be 
frightened. For some reason or other things were all 
trying together to-day to see if they could crush her, 
beat out her spirit. But they weren’t going to... . 


190 VERA 


She jerked her wet hair out of her eyes as she 
climbed the stairs. It kept on getting into them and 
making her stumble. Vera would help her. Vera never 
was beaten. Vera had had fifteen years of not being 
beaten before she—before she had that accident. And 
there must have been heaps of days just like this one, 
with the wind screaming and Vera up in her room and 
Everard down in his—locked in, perhaps—and yet Vera 
had managed, and her spirit wasn’t beaten out. For 
years and years, panted Lucy—her very thoughts 
came in gasps—Vera lived up here winter after winter, 
years, years, years, and would have been here now 
if she hadn’t—oh, if only Vera weren’t dead! If only, 
only Vera weren’t dead! But her mind lived on—her 
mind was in that room, in every littlest thing in it 

Lucy stumbled up the last few stairs completely out 
of breath, and opening the sitting-room door stood 
panting on the threshold much as Lizzie had done, her 
hand on her chest. 

This time everything was in order. The window was 
shut, the scattered notepaper collected and tidily on 
the writing-table, the rain on the floor wiped up, and 
a fire had been lit and the wet cushions were drying in 
front of it. Also there was Lizzie, engaged in con- 
science-stricken activities, and when Lucy came in she > 
was on her knees poking the fire. She was poking so 
vigorously that she didn’t hear the door open, espe- 
cially not with that rattling and banging of the window 
going on; and on getting up and seeing the figure 
standing there panting, with strands of lank hair in its 





VERA 191 


eyes and its general air of neglect and weather, she 
gave a loud exclamation. 

“Lumme!” exclaimed Lizzie, whose origin and bring- 
ing-up had been obscure. 

She had helped carry in the luggage that morning, 
so she had seen her mistress before and knew what she 
was like in her dry state. She never could have 
believed, having seen her then all nicely fluffed out, 
that there was so little of her. Lizzie knew what long- 
haired dogs look like when they are being soaped, and 
she was also familiar with cats as they appear after 
drowning; yet they too surprised her, in spite of 
familiarity, each time she saw them in these circum- 
stances by their want of real substance, of stuffing. 
Her mistress looked just like that,—no stuffing at all; 
and therefore Lizzie, the poker she was holding arrested 
in mid-air on its way into its corner, exclaimed Lumme. 

Then, realising that this weather-beaten figure must 
certainly be catching its death of cold, she dropped the 
poker and hurrying across the room and talking in 
the stress of the moment like one girl to another, she 
felt Lucy’s sleeve and said, ‘“‘Why, you’re wet to the 
bones. Come to the fire and take them sopping clothes 
off this minute, or you'll be laid up as sure as sure ie 
and pulled her over to the fire; and having got her 
there, and she saying nothing at all and not resisting, 
Lizzie stripped off her clothes and shoes and stockings, 
repeating at frequent intervals as she did so, “Dear, 
dear,” and repressing a strong desire to beg her not 
to take on, lest later, perhaps, her mistress mightn’t 





192 VERA 


like her to have noticed she had been crying. Then 
she snatched up a woollen coverlet that lay folded on 
the end of the sofa, rolled her tightly round in it, sat 
her in a chair right up close to the fender, and still 
talking like one girl to another said, “Now sit there and 
don’t move while I fetch dry things—I won’t be above 
a minute—now you promise, don’t you ” and hurry- 
ing to the door never remembered her manners at all 
till she was through it, whereupon she put in her head 
again and hastily said, ‘“‘Mum,” and disappeared. 

She was away, however, more than a minute. Five 
minutes, ten minutes passed and Lizzie, feverishly 
unpacking Lucy’s clothes in the bedroom below, and 
trying to find a complete set of them, and not knowing 
what belonged to which, didn’t come back. 

Lucy sat quite still, rolled up in Vera’s coverlet. 
Obediently she didn’t move, but stared straight into the 
fire, sitting so close up to it that the rest of the room 
was shut out. She couldn’t see the window, or the 
dismal rain streaming down it. She saw nothing but 
the fire, blazing cheerfully. How kind Lizzie was. 
How comforting kindness was. It was a thing she 
understood, a normal, natural thing, and it made her 
feel normal and natural just to be with it. Lizzie had 
given her such a vigorous rub down that her skin 
tingled. Her hair was on ends, for that too had had a 
vigorous rubbing from Lizzie, who had taken her apron 
to it feeling that this was an occasion on which one 
abandoned convention and went in for resource. And 
as Lucy sat there getting warmer and warmer, and 





VERA 193 


more and more pervaded by the feeling of relief and 
well-being that even the most wretched feel if they take 
off all their clothes, her mind gradually calmed down, 
it left off asking agonised questions, and presently her 
heart began to do the talking. 

She was so much accustomed to find life kind, that 
given a moment of quiet like this with somebody being 
good-natured and back she slipped to her usual state, 
which was one of affection and confidence. Lizzie hadn’t 
been gone five minutes before Lucy had passed from 
sheer bewildered misery to making excuses for Everard; 
in ten minutes she was seeing good reasons for what he 
had done; in fifteen she was blaming herself for most 
of what had happened. She had been amazingly idiotic 
to run out of the room, and surely quite mad to run 
out of the house. It was wrong, of course, for him to 
bolt her out, but he was angry, and people did things 
when they were angry that horrified them afterwards. 
Surely people who easily got angry needed all the sym- 
pathy and understanding one could give them,—not 
to be met by despair and the loss of faith in them of 
the person they had hurt. That only turned passing, 
temporary bad things into a long unhappiness. She 
hadn’t known he had a temper. She had only, so far, 
discovered his extraordinary capacity for being of- 
fended. Well, if he had a temper how could he help it? 
He was born that way, as certainly as if he had been 
born lame. Would she not have been filled with tender- 
ness for his lameness if he had happened to be born 


194 VERA 


like that? Would it ever have occurred to her to mind, 
to feel it as a grievance? 

The warmer Lucy got the more eager she grew to 
justify Wemyss. In the middle of the reasons she 
was advancing for his justification, however, it sud- 
denly struck her that they were a little smug. All that 
about people with tempers needing sympathy,—who 
was she, with her impulses and impatiences—with her, 
as she now saw, devastating impulses and impatiences— 
to take a line of what was very like pity. Pity! 
Smug, odious word; smug, odious thing. Wouldn’t she 
hate it if she thought he pitied her for her failings? 
Let him be angry with her failings, but not pity her. 
She and her man, they needed no pity from each other; 
they had love. It was impossible that anything either 
of them did or was should really touch that. 

Very warm now in Vera’s blanket, her face flushed 
by the fire, Lucy asked herself what could really put 
out that great, glorious, central blaze. All that was 
needed was patience when he. . . . She gave herself 
a shake,—there she was again, thinking smugly. She 
wouldn’t think at all. She would just take things as 
they came, and love, and love. 

Then the vision of Everard, sitting solitary with his 
newspaper and by this time, too, probably thinking 
only of love, and anyhow not happy, caused one of 
those very impulses to lay hold of her which she had a 
moment before been telling herself she would never give 
way to again. She was aware one had gripped her, 
but this was a good impulse,—this wasn’t a bad one 


VERA 195 


like running out into the rain: she would go down and 
have another try at that door. She was warmed 
through now and quite reasonable, and she felt she 
couldn’t another minute endure not being at peace with 
Everard. How silly they were. It was ridiculous. It 
was like two children fighting. Lizzie was so long 
bringing her clothes; she couldn’t wait, she must sit on 
Everard’s knee again, feel his arms round her, see his 
eyes looking kind. She would go down in her blanket. 
It wrapped her up from top to toe. Only her feet were 
bare; but they were quite warm, and anyhow feet didn’t 
matter. 

So Lucy padded softly downstairs, making hardly 
a sound, and certainly none that could be heard above 
the noise of the wind by Lizzie in the bedroom, fran- 
tically throwing clothes about. 

She knocked at the library door. 

Wemyss’s voice said, “Come in.” 

So he had unlocked it. So he had hoped she would 
come. 

He didn’t, however, look round. He was sitting 
with his back to the door at the writing-table in the 
window, writing. 

“T want my flowers in here,” he said, without turning 
his head. 

So he had rung. So he thought it was the parlour- 
maid. So he hadn’t unlocked the door because he 
hoped she would come. 

But his flowers,—he wanted his birthday flowers in 


196 VERA 


there because they were all that were left to him of his 
ruined birthday. 

When she heard this order Lucy’s heart rushed out 
‘to him. She shut the door softly and with her bare 
feet making no sound went up behind him. , 

He thought the parlourmaid had shut the door, and 
gone to carry out his order. Feeling an arm put round 
his shoulder he thought the parlourmaid hadn’t gone 
to carry out his order, but had gone mad instead. 

“Good God!” he exclaimed, jumping up. 

At the sight of Lucy in her blanket, with her bare 
feet and her confused hair, his face changed. He stared 
at her without speaking. 


“T’ve come to tell you—I’ve come to tell you i 





she began. 

Then she faltered, for his mouth was a mere hard 
line. 

‘‘Everard, darling,” she said entreatingly, lifting her 
face to his, “let’s be friends—please let’s be friends— 


33 





I’m so sorry—so sorry 

His eyes ran over her. It was evident that all she 
had on was that blanket. A strange fury came into 
his face, and he turned his back on her and marched 
with a heavy tread to the door, a tread that made Lucy 
for some reason she couldn’t at first understand, think 
of Elgar. Why Elgar? part of her asked, puzzled, 
while the rest of her was blankly watching Wemyss. 
Of course: the march: Pomp and Circumstance. 

At the door he turned and said, “Since you thrust 


VERA 197 


yourself into my room when I have shown you I don’t 
desire your company you force me to leave it.” 

Then he added, his voice sounding queer and through 
his teeth, ““You’d better go and put your clothes on. 
I assure you I’m proof against sexual allurements.”’ 

Then he went out. 

Lucy stood looking at the door. Sexual allurements? 
What did he mean? Did he think—did he mean 

She flushed suddenly, and gripping her blanket tight 
about her she too marched to the door, her eyes bright 
and fixed. 

Considering the blanket, she walked upstairs with a 
good deal of dignity, and passed the bedroom door 





just as Lizzie, her arms full of a complete set of cloth- 
ing, came out of it. 

“Lumme!” once more exclaimed Lizzie, who seemed 
marked down for shocks; and dropped a hairbrush and 
a shoe. 

Disregarding her, Lucy proceeded up the next flight 
with the same dignity, and having reached Vera’s room 
crossed to the fire, where she stood in silence while 
Lizzie, who had hurried after her and was reproaching 
her for having gone downstairs like that, dressed her 
and. brushed her hair. 

She was quite silent. She didn’t move. She was 
miles away from Lizzie, absorbed in quite a new set 
of astonished, painful thoughts. But at the end, when 
Lizzie asked her if there was anything more she could 
do, she looked at her a minute and then, having realised 
her, put out her hand and laid it on her arm. 


198 VERA 


“Thank you very much for everything,” she said 
earnestly. 


“I’m terribly sorry about that window, mum,’ 


said 
Lizzie, who was sure she had been the cause of trouble. 
**T don’t know what come over me to forget it.” 

Lucy smiled faintly at her. “Never mind,” she said; 
and she thought that if it hadn’t been for that window 
she and Everard—well, it was no use thinking like that ; 
perhaps there would have been something else. 

Lizzie went. She was a recent acquisition, and was 
the only one of the servants who hadn’t known the late 
Mrs. Wemyss, but she told herself that anyhow she 
preferred this one. She went; and Lucy stood where 
she had left her, staring at the floor, dropping back 
into her quite new set of astonished, painful thoughts. 

Everard,—that was an outrage, that about sexual 
allurements; just simply an outrage. She flushed at 
the remembrance of it; her whole body seemed to flush 
hot. She felt as though never again would she be 
able to bear him making love to her. He had spoilt 
that. But that was a dreadful way to feel, that was 
destructive of the very heart of marriage. No, she 
mustn’t let herself—she must stamp that feeling out; 
she must forget what he had said. He couldn’t really 
have meant it. He was still in a temper. She oughtn’t 
to have gone down. But how could she know? All 
this was new to her, a new side of Everard. Perhaps, 
she thought, watching the reflection of the flames 
flickering on the shiny, slippery oak floor, only people 
with tempers should marry people with tempers. They 


VERA 199 


would understand each other, say the same sort of 
things, tossing them backwards and forwards like a 
fiery, hissing ball, know the exact time it would last, 
and be saved by their vivid emotions from the deadly 
hurt, the deadly loneliness of the one who couldn’t 
get into a rage. 

Loneliness. 

She lifted her head and looked round the room. 

No, she wasn’t lonely. There was still 

Suddenly she went to the bookshelves, and began 
pulling out the books quickly, hungrily, reading their 
names, turning over their pages in a kind of starving 
hurry to get to know, to get to understand, Vera... . 





XXI 


EANWHILE, Wemyss had gone into the 
M drawing-room till such time as his wife 
should choose to allow him to have his own 

library to himself again. 

For a long while he walked up and down it thinking 
bitter things, for he was very angry. The drawing- 
room was a big gaunt room, rarely used of recent 
years. In the early days, when people called on the 
newly arrived Wemysses, there had been gatherings in 
it,—retaliatory festivities to the vicar, to the doctor, 
to the landlord, with a business acquaintance or two 
of Wemyss’s, wife appended, added to fill out, ‘These 
festivities, however, died of inanition. Something was 
wanting, something necessary to nourish life in them. 
He thought of them as he walked about the echoing 
room from which the last guest had departed years ago. 
Vera, of course. Her fault that the parties had left off. 
She had been so slack, so indifferent. You couldn’t 
expect people to come to your house if you took no 
pains to get them there. Yet what a fine room for 
entertaining. The grand piano, too. Never used. 
And Vera who made such a fuss about music, and 
pretended she knew all about it. 

The piano was clothed from head to foot in a heavy 

200 


VERA 201 


red baize cover, even its legs being buttoned round in 
what looked like Alpine Sport gaiters, and the baize 
flap that protected the keys had buttons all along it 
from one end to the other. In order to play, these but- 
tons had first to be undone,—Wemyss wasn’t going to 
have the expensive piano not taken care of. It had 
been his wedding present to Vera—how he had loved 
that woman !—and he had had the baize clothes made 
specially, and had instructed Vera that whenever the 
piano was not in use it was to have them on, properly 
fastened. 

What trouble he had had with her at first about it. 
She was always forgetting to button it up again. She 
would be playing, and get up and go away to lunch, 
or tea, or out into the garden, and leave it uncovered 
with the damp and dust getting into it, and not only 
uncovered but with its lid open. Then, when she found 
that he went in to see if she had remembered, she did 
for a time cover it up in the intervals of playing, but 
never buttoned all its buttons; invariably he found that 
some had been forgotten. It had cost £150. Women 
had no sense of property. They were unfit to have 
the charge of valuables. Besides, they got tired of 
them. Vera had actually quite soon got tired of the 
piano. His present. That wasn’t very loving of her. 
And when he said anything about it she wouldn’t speak. 
Sulked. How profoundly he disliked sulking. And 
she, who had made such a fuss about music when first 
he met her, gave up playing, and for years no one had 


202 VERA 


touched the piano. Well, at least it was being taken 
care of. 

From habit he stooped and ran his eye up its gaiters. 

All buttoned. 

Stay—no; one buttonhole gaped. 

He stooped closer and put out his hand to button it, 
and found the button gone. No button. Only an 
end of thread. How was that? 

He straightened himself, and went to the fireplace 
and rang the bell. Then he waited, looking at his 
watch, Long ago he had timed the distances between 
the different rooms and the servants’ quarters, allowing 
for average walking and one minute’s margin for get- 
ting under weigh at the start, so that he knew exactly 
at what moment the parlourmaid ought to appear. 

She appeared just as time was up and his finger was 
moving toward the bell again. 

“Look at that piano-leg,”’ said Wemyss. 

The parlourmaid, not knowing which leg, looked at 
all three so as to be safe. 

“What do you see?” he asked. 

The parlourmaid was reluctant to say. What she 
saw was piano-legs, but she felt that wasn’t the right 
answer. 

“What do you not see?” Wemyss asked, louder. 

This was much more difficult, because there were so 
many things she didn’t see; her parents, for instance. 

‘Are you deaf, woman?” he inquired, 

She knew the answer to that, and said it que, 
“No sir,”’ she said. 


VERA 203 


“Look at that piano-leg, I say,” said Wemyss, point- 
ing with his pipe. 

It was, so to speak, the off foreleg at which he 
pointed, and the parlourmaid, relieved to be given a 
clue, fixed her eye on it earnestly. 

“What do you see?” he asked. “Or, rather, what 
do you not see?” 

The parlourmaid looked hard at what she saw, 
leaving what she didn’t see to take care of itself. It 
seemed unreasonable to be asked to look at what she 
didn’t see. But though she looked, she could see noth- 
ing to justify speech. Therefore she was silent. 

“Don’t you see there’s a button off ?” 

The parlourmaid, on looking closer, did see that, 
and said so. 

“Isn’t it your business to attend to this room?” 

She admitted that it was. 

“Buttons don’t come off of themselves,” Wemyss 
informed her. 

The parlourmaid, this not being a question, said 
nothing. 

“Do they?” he asked loudly. 

“No sir,” said the parlourmaid; though she could 
have told him many a story of things buttons did do 
of themselves coming off in your hand when you hadn’t 
so much as begun to touch them. Cups, too. The 
way cups would fall apart in one’s hand 





She, however, merely said, “No, sir.” 
“Only wear and tear makes them come off,” Wemyss 
announced; and continuing judicially, emphasising his 


204 VERA 


words with a raised forefinger, he said: ““Now attend 
to me. This piano hasn’t been used for years. Do 
you hear that? Not for years. To my certain knowl- 
edge not for years. Therefore the cover cannot have 
been unbuttoned legitimately, it cannot have been un- 
buttoned by any one authorised to unbutton it. There- 
fore———”’ 

He pointed his finger straight at her and paused. 
“Do you follow me?” he asked sternly. 

The parlourmaid hastily reassembled her wandering 
thoughts. “Yes sir,” she said, 

“Therefore some one unauthorised has unbuttoned 
the cover, and some one unauthorised has played on the 
piano. Do you understand?” 

“Yes sir,” said the parlourmaid. 

“It is hardly credible,’ he went on, “but neverthe- 
less the conclusion can’t be escaped, that some one has 
actually taken advantage of my absence to play on that 


33 





piano. Some one in this house has actually dared 
‘“There’s the tuner,” said the parlourmaid tenta- 
tively, not sure if that would be an explanation, for 
Wemyss’s lucid sentences, almost of a legal lucidity, 
invariably confused her, but giving the suggestion for 
what it was worth. ‘I understood the orders was to let 
the tuner in once a quarter, sir, Yesterday was his 
day. He played for a hour. And ’ad the baize and 
everything off, and the lid leaning against the wall.” 
True. True. The tuner. Wemyss had forgotten 
the tuner. The tuner had standing instructions to 
come and tune. Well, why couldn’t the fool-woman 


VERA 205 


have reminded him sooner? But the tuner having tuned 
didn’t excuse the parlourmaid’s not having sewn on 
the button the tuner had pulled off. 

He told her so. 

“Yes sir,” she said. 

“You will have that button on in five minutes,” he 
said, pulling out his watch. “In five minutes exactly 
from now that button will be on. I shall be staying 
in this room, so shall see for myself that you carry out 
my orders.” 

“Yes sir,” said the parlourmaid. 

He walked to the window and stood staring at the 
wild afternoon. She remained motionless where she 
was. 

What a birthday he was having. And with what joy 
he had looked forward to it. It seemed to him very 
like the old birthdays with Vera, only so much more 
painful because he had expected so much. Vera had 
got him used to expecting very little; but it was Lucy, 
his adored Lucy, who was inflicting this cruel disap- 
pointment on him. Lucy! Incredible. And she to 
come down in that blanket, tempting him, very nearly 
getting him that way rather than by the only right 
and decent way of sincere and obvious penitence. Why, 
even Vera had never done a thing like that, not once in 
all the years. 

“Let’s be friends,” says Lucy. Friends! Yes, she 
did say something about sorry, but what about that 
blanket? Sorrow with no clothes on couldn’t possibly 
be genuine. It didn’t go together with that kind of 


206 VERA 


appeal. It was not the sort of combination one ex- 
pected in a wife. Why couldn’t she come down and 
apologise properly dressed? God, her little shoulder 
sticking out—how he had wanted to seize and kiss it 
. . . but then that would have been giving in, that 
would have meant her triumph. Her triumph, indeed— 
when it was she, and she only, who had begun the whole 
thing, running out of the room like that, not obeying 
him when he called, humiliating him before that damned 
Tazzie, ie. se 

He thrust his hands into his pockets and turned 
away with a jerk from the window. 

There, standing motionless, was the parlourmaid. 

“What? You still here?’ he exclaimed. “Why 
the devil don’t you go and fetch that button?” 

“YT understood your orders was none of us is to leave 
rooms without your permission, sir.” 

“You'd better be quick then,” he said, looking at 
his watch. “I gave you five minutes, and three of them 
have gone.” 

She disappeared; and in the servants’ sitting-room, 
while she was hastily searching for her thimble and a 
button that would approximately do, she told the 
others what they already knew but found satisfaction 
in repeating often, that if it weren’t that Wemyss was 
most of the week in London, not a day, not a minute, 
would she stay in the place. 

‘“There’s the wages,” the cook reminded her. 

Yes; they were good; higher than anywhere she 
had heard of. But what was the making of the place 


VERA 207 


was the complete freedom from Monday morning every 
week to Friday tea-time. Almost anything could be 
put up with from Friday tea-time till Monday morning, 
seeing that the rest of the week they could do exactly 
as they chose, with the whole place as good as belonging 
to them; and she hurried away, and got back to the 
drawing-room thirty seconds over time. 

Wemyss, however, wasn’t there with his watch. He 
was on his way upstairs to the top of the house, telling 
himself as he went that if Lucy chose to take possession 
of his library he would go and take possession of her 
sitting-room. It was only fair. But he knew she wasn’t 
now in the library. He knew she wouldn’t stay there 
all that time. He wanted an excuse to himself for going 
to where she was. She must beg his pardon properly. 
He could hold out—oh, he could hold out all right for 
any length of time, as she’d find out very soon if she 
tried the sulking game with him—but to-day it was 
their first day in his home; it was his birthday; and 
though nothing could be more monstrous than the way 
she had ruined everything, yet if she begged his pardon 
properly he would forgive her, he was ready to take her 
back the moment she showed real penitence. Never 
was a woman loved as he loved Lucy. If only she 
would be penitent, if only she would properly and 
sincerely apologise, then he could kiss her again. He 
would kiss that little shoulder of hers, make her pull 
her blouse back so that he could see it as he saw it down 
in the library, sticking out of that damned blanket— 
God, how he loved her... . 


XXIT 


P AHE first thing he saw when he opened the door 

of the room at the top of the house was the 
fire. 

A fire. He hadn’t ordered a fire. He must look into 

that. That officious slattern Lizzie 

Then, before he had recovered from this, he had 

another shock. Lucy was on the hearthrug, her head 





leaning against the sofa, sound asleep. 

So that’s what she had been doing—just going com- 
fortably to sleep, while he 

He shut the door and walked over to the fireplace 
and stood with his back to it looking down at her. 
Even his heavy tread didn’t wake her. He had shut 
the door in the way that was natural, and had walked 
across the room in the way that was natural, for he 





felt no impulse in the presence of sleep to go softly. 
Besides, why should she sleep in broad daylight? 
Wemyss was of opinion that the night was for that. 
No wonder she couldn’t sleep at night if she did it in 
the daytime. There she was, sleeping soundly, com- 
pletely indifferent to what he might be doing. Would 
a really loving woman be able to do that? Would a 
really devoted wife? 

Then he noticed that her face, the side of it he could 

208 


VERA 209 


see, was much swollen, and her nose was red. At least, 
he thought, she had had some contrition for what she 
had done before going to sleep. It was to be hoped 
she would wake up in a proper frame of mind. If so, 
even now some of the birthday might be saved. 

He took out his pipe and filled it slowly, his eyes 
wandering constantly to the figure on the floor. Fancy 
that thing having the power to make or mar his happi- 
ness. He could pick that much up with one hand. It 
looked like twelve, with its long-stockinged relaxed legs, 
and its round, short-haired head, and its swollen face 
of a child in a scrape. Make or mar. He lit his pipe, 
repeating the phrase to himself, struck by it, struck by 
the way it illuminated his position of bondage to love. 

All his life, he reflected, he had only asked to be 
allowed to lavish love, to make a wife happy. Look 
how he had loved Vera: with the utmost devotion till 
she had killed it, and nothing but trouble as a reward. 
Look how he loved that little thing on the floor. 
Passionately. And in return, the first thing she did on 
being brought into his home as his bride was to quarrel 
and ruin his birthday. She knew how keenly he had 
looked forward to his birthday, she knew how the ar- 
rangements of the whole honeymoon, how the very date 
of the wedding, had hinged on this one day; yet she 
had deliberately ruined it. And having ruined it, what 
did she care? Comes up here, if you please, and gets 
a book and goes comfortably to sleep over it in front 
of the fire. 

His mouth hardened still more. He pulled the arm- 


210 VERA 


chair up and sat down noisily in it, his eyes cold with 
resentment. 

The book Lucy had been reading had dropped out 
of her hand when she fell asleep, and lay open on the 
floor at his feet. If she used books in such a way, 
Wemyss thought, he would be very careful how he let 
her have the key of his bookcase. - This was one of 
Vera’s,—Vera hadn’t taken any care of her books 
either; she was always reading them. He slanted his 
head sideways to see the title, to see what it was Lucy 
had considered more worth her attention than her 
conduct that day towards her husband. Wuthering 
Heights. Ue hadn’t read it, but he fancied he had 
heard of it as a morbid story. She might have been 
better employed, on their first day at home, than in 
shutting herself away from him reading a morbid story. 

It was while he was looking at her with these 
thoughts stonily in his eyes that Lucy, wakened by the 
smell of his pipe, opened hers. She saw Everard sitting 
close to her, and had one of those moments of instinc- 
tive happiness, of complete restoration to unshadowed 
contentment, which sometimes follow immediately on 
waking up, before there has been time to remember. 
It seems for a wonderful instant as though all in the 
world were well. Doubts have vanished. Pain is gone. 
And sometimes the moment. continues even beyond re- 
membrance. 

It did so now with Lucy. When she opened her 
eyes and saw Everard, she smiled at him a smile of 
perfect confidence. She had forgotten everything. She 


VERA 911 


woke up after a deep sleep and saw hin, her dear love, 
sitting beside her. How natural to be happy. Then, 
the expression on his face bringing back remembrance, 
it seemed to her in that first serene sanity, that clear- 
visioned moment of spirit unfretted by body, that they 
had been extraordinarily silly, taking everything the 
other one said and did with a tragicness. . 

Only love filled Lucy after the deep, restoring sleep. 
“Dearest one,” she murmured drowsily, smiling at him, 
without changing her position. 

He said nothing to that; and presently, having 
woken up more, she got on to her knees and pulled 
herself across to him and curled up at his feet, her head 
against his knee. 

He still said nothing. He waited. He would give 
her time. Her words had been familiar, but not 
penitent. They had hardly been the right beginning 
for an expression of contrition; but he would see what 
she said next, 

What she said next was, “‘Haven’t. we been silly,”— 
and, more familiarity, she put one arm round his knees 
and held them close against her face. 

“Wer? said Wemyss. “Did you say we?” 

“Yes,” said Lucy, her cheek against his knee. 
““We’ve been wasting time.”’ 

Wemyss paused before he made his comment on this. 
“Really,” he then said, “the way you include me shows 
very little appreciation of your conduct.” 

“Well, I’ve been silly, then,” she said, lifting her head 
and smiling up at him. 


212 VERA 


She simply couldn’t go on with indignations. Per- 
haps they were just ones, It didn’t matter if they 
were. Who wanted to be in the right in a dispute with 
one’s lover? Everybody, oh, everybody who loved 
would passionately want always to have been in the 
wrong, never, never to have been right. ‘That one’s 
beloved should have been unkind,—who wanted that to 
be true? Who wouldn’t do anything sooner than have 
not been mistaken about it? Vividly she saw Everard 
as he was before their marriage; so dear, so boyish, 
such fun, her playmate. She could say anything to 
him then. She had been quite fearless. And vividly, 
too, she saw him as he was when first they met, both 
crushed by death,—how he had comforted her, how he 
had been everything that was wonderful and tender. 
All that had happened since, all that had happened on 
this particular and most unfortunate day, was only a 
sort of excess of boyishness: boyishness on its un- 
controlled side, a wave, a fit of bad temper provoked by 
her not having held on to her impulses, That locking 
her out in the rain,—a schoolboy might have done that 
to another schoolboy. It meant nothing, except that 
he was angry. That about sexual allure——oh, well. 

“ve been very silly,” she said earnestly. 

He looked down at her in silence. He wanted more 
than that. That wasn’t nearly enough. He wanted 
much more of humbleness before he could bring himself 
to lift her on to his knee, forgiven. And how much he 
wanted her on his knee. 

“Do you realise what you’ve done?” he asked. 


VERA 213 


“Yes,” said Lucy. “And I’m so sorry. Won’t we 
kiss and be friends?” 

“Not yet, thank you. I must be sure first that you 
understand how deliberately wicked you’ve been.” 

“Oh, but I haven’t been deliberately wicked!” 
exclaimed Lucy, opening her eyes wide with astonish- 
ment. “Everard, how can you say such a thing?’’ 

“Ah, I see. You are still quite impenitent, and I 
am sorry I came up.” 

He undid her arm from round his knees, put her on 
one side, and got out of the chair. Rage swept over 
him again. 

“Here I’ve been sitting watching you like a dog,” he 
said, towering over her, “like a faithful dog while you 
slept,—waiting patiently till you woke up and only 
wanting to forgive you, and you not only callously 
sleep after having behaved outrageously and allowed 
yourself to exhibit temper before the whole house on 
our very first day together in my home—well knowing, 
mind you, what day it is—but when I ask you for some 
sign, some word, some assurance that you are ashamed 
of yourself and will not repeat your conduct, you 
merely deny that you have done anything needing 
forgiveness.” 

He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, his face twitch- 
ing with anger, and wished to God he could knock the 
opposition out of Lucy as easily. 

She, on the floor, sat looking up at him, her mouth 


open. What could she do with Everard? She didn’t 


214 VERA 


know. Love had no effect; saying she was sorry had 
no effect. 

She pushed her hair nervously behind her ears with 
both hands. “I’m sick of quarrels,” she said, 

“So am I,” said Wemyss, going towards the door 
thrusting his pipe into his pocket. ‘‘You’ve only got 
yourself to thank for them.” 

She didn’t protest. It seemed useless. She said, 
‘Forgive me, Everard.” 

“Only if you apologise.” 

6 ag 7? 

“Yes what?”? He paused for her answer. 

“IT do apologise.”’ 

“You admit you’ve been deliberately wicked?” 

“Oh yes.’ 

He continued towards the door. 

She scrambled to her feet and ran after him. ‘Please 
don’t go,” she begged, catching his arm. “You know I 


99 





can’t bear it, I can’t bear it if we quarrel 

‘Then what do you mean by saying ‘Oh yes,’ in that 
insolent manner?” 

‘Did it seem insolent? I didn’t mean—oh, I’m so 
tired of this is 

“I daresay. You'll be tireder still before you’ve 
done. I don’t get tired, let me tell you. You can go 





on as long as you choose,—it won’t affect me.” 
“Oh do, do let’s be friends. I don’t want to go on. 
I don’t want anything in the world except to be friends. 
Please kiss me, Everard, and say you forgive me——” 
He at least stood still and looked at her. 


VERA 215 





‘And do believe I’m so, so sorry 3 

He relented. He wanted, extraordinarily, to kiss 
her. “Ill accept it if you assure me it is so,” he said. 

‘And do, do let’s be happy. It’s your birthday ‘i 

“As though I’ve forgotten that.” 

He looked at her upturned face; her arm was round 
his neck now. ‘“‘Lucy, I don’t believe you understand 





my love for you,’ he said solemnly. 

“No,” said Lucy truthfully, “I don’t think I do.” 

“You'll have to learn.” 

“Yes,” said Lucy; and sighed faintly. 

‘You mustn’t wound such love.” 

“No,” said Lucy. ‘Don’t let us wound each other 
ever any more, darling Everard.” 

“I’m not talking of each other. I’m talking at this 
moment of myself in relation to you. One thing at a 
time, please.” 

“Yes,” said Lucy. “Kiss me, won’t you, Everard? 
Else I shan’t know we’re really friends.” 

He took her head in his hands, and bestowed a solemn 
kiss of pardon on her brow. 

She tried to coax him back to cheerfulness. ‘‘Kiss 
my eyes too,” she said, smiling at him, “‘or they’ll feel 
neglected.” 

He kissed her eyes, 

‘‘And now my mouth, please, Everard.” 

He kissed her mouth, and did at last smile. 

“And now won’t we go to the fire and be cosy?” she 
asked, her arm in his. 


216 VERA 


“By the way, who ordered the fire?”’ he inquired in 
his ordinary voice. 

“T don’t know. It was lit when I came up. Oughtn’t 
it to have been?” 

“Not without orders. It must have been that Lizzie. 
Pll ring and find out i 

“Oh, don’t ring!” exclaimed Lucy, catching his hand 
—she felt she couldn’t bear any more ringing. “If you 





do she’ll come, and I want us to be alone together.” 

“Well, whose fault is it we haven’t been alone to- 
gether all this time?” he asked. 

“Ah, but we’re friends now—you mustn’t go back 
to that any more,’ she said, anxiously smiling and 
drawing his hand through her arm. 

He allowed her to lead him to the arm-chair, and 
sitting in it did at last feel justified in taking her on 
his knee, 

“Tow my own Love spoils things,” he said, shaking 
his head at her with fond solemnity when they were 
settled in the chair. 

And Lucy, very cautious now, only said gently, 
“But I never mean to.” 


XXIIT 


HE sat after that without speaking on his knee, 
S his arms round her, her head on his breast. 
She was thinking. 

Try as she might to empty herself of everything 
except acceptance and love, she found that only her 
body was controllable. That lay quite passive in 
Wemyss’s arms; but her mind refused to lie passive, 
it would think. Strange how tightly one’s body could 
be held, how close to somebody else’s heart, and yet 
one wasn’t anywhere near the holder. They locked 
you up in prisons that way, holding your body tight 
and thinking they had got you, and all the while your 
mind—you—was as free as the wind and the sunlight. 
She couldn’t help it, she struggled hard to feel as she 
had felt when she woke up and saw him sitting near her; 
but the way he had refused to be friends, the complete 
absence of any readiness in him to meet her, not half, 
nor even a quarter, but a little bit of the way, had for 
the first time made her consciously afraid of him. 

She was afraid of him, and she was afraid of herself 
in relation to him. He seemed outside anything of 
which she had experience. He appeared not to be— 
he anyhow had not been that day—generdus. There 
seemed no way, at any point, by which one could reach 
him. What was he really like? How long was it 

217 


218 VERA 


going to take her really to know him? Years? And 
she herself,—she now knew, now that she had made 
their acquaintance, that she couldn’t at all bear scenes. 
Any scenes. Either with herself, or in her presence 
with other people. She couldn’t bear them while they 
were going on, and she couldn’t bear the exhaustion 
of the long drawn-out making up at the end. And 
she not only didn’t see how they were to be avoided— 
for no care, no caution would for ever be able to watch 
what she said, or did, or looked, or equally important, 
what she didn’t. say, or didn’t do, or didn’t look—but 
she was afraid, afraid with a most dismal foreboding, 
that some day after one of them, or in the middle of one 
of them, her nerve would give out and she would col- 
lapse. Collapse deplorably; into just something that 
howled and whimpered. 

This, however, was horrible. She mustn’t think 
like this. Sufficient unto the day, she thought, trying 
to make herself smile, is the whimpering thereof. 
Besides, she wouldn’t whimper, she wouldn’t go to 
pieces, she would discover a way to manage. Where 
there was so much love there must be a way to manage. 

He had pulled her blouse back, and was kissing her 
shoulder and asking her whose very own wife she was. 
But what was the good of love-making if it was imme 
diately preceded or followed or interrupted by anger? 
She was afraid of him. She wasn’t in this kissing at 
all. Perhaps she had been afraid of him unconsciously 
for a long while. What was that abjectness on the 
honeymoon, that anxious desire to please, to avoid 


VERA 219 


offending, but fear? It was love afraid; afraid of get- 
ting hurt, of not going to be able to believe whole- 
heartedly, of not going to be able—this was the worst— 
to be proud of its beloved. But now, after her experi- 
ences to-day, she had a fear of him more separate, 
more definite, distinct from love. Strange to be afraid 
of him and love him at the same time. Perhaps if she 
didn’t love him she wouldn’t be afraid of him. No, 
she didn’t think she would then, because then nothing 
that he said would reach her heart. Only she couldn’t 
imagine that. He was her heart. 

“What are you thinking of?” asked Wemyss, who 
having finished with her shoulder noticed how quiet 
she was. 

She could tell him truthfully; a moment sooner and 
she couldn’t have. ‘‘I was thinking,’ she said, “that 
you are my heart.” 

“Take care of your heart then, won’t you,” said 
Wemyss. 

“We both will,” said Lucy. 

“Of course,’ said Wemyss, ‘That’s understood. 
Why state it?” 

She was silent a minute. Then she said, “‘Isn’t it 
nearly tea-time?”’ 

“By Jove, yes,” he exclaimed, pulling out his watch. 
“Why, long past. I wonder what that fool—get up, 
little Love—” he brushed her off his lap—“I’ll ring and 
find out what she means by it.” 

Lucy was sorry she had said anything about tea. 
However, he didn’t keep his finger on the bell this time, 


220 VERA 


but rang it normally. Then he stood looking at his 
watch. 

She put her arm through his, She longed to say, 
“Please don’t scold her.” 

“Take care,” he said, his eyes on his watch. ‘Don’t 
shake me——’”’ 

She asked what he was doing. 

“Timing her,” he said. ‘“Sh—sh—don’t talk. I 
can’t keep count if you talk.” 

She became breathlessly quiet and expectant. She 
listened anxiously for the sound of footsteps. She did 
hope Lizzie would come in time. Lizzie was so nice,— 
it would be dreadful if she got a scolding. Why didn’t 
she come? There—what was that? A door going 
somewhere. Would she do it? Would she? 

Running steps came along the passage outside. 
Wemyss put his watch away. ‘Five seconds to spare,” 
he said. ‘“That’s the way to teach them to answer 
bells,’’ he added with satisfaction. 

“Did you ring, sir?” inquired Lizzie, opening the 
door. 

“Why is tea late?”’ 

“It’s in the library, sir.” 

“Kindly attend to my question. I asked why tea 
was late.” 

“It wasn’t late to begin with, sir,’’ said Lizzie. 

‘Be so good as to make yourself clear.” 

Lizzie, who had felt quite clear, here became be- 
fogged. She did her best, however. “It’s got late 
through waiting to be ’ad, sir,’’ she said. 


VERA 221 


“Tm afraid I don’t follow you. Do you?” he asked, 
turning to Lucy. 

She started. “Yes,” she said. 

“Really. Then you are cleverer than I am,” said 
Wemyss. 

Lizzie at this—for she didn’t want to make any more 
trouble for the young lady—made a further effort to 
explain. “It was punctual in the library, sir, at ’alf- 
past four if you’d been there to ’ave it. The tea was 
punctual, sir, but there wasn’t no one to ’ave it.” 

‘And pray by whose orders was it in the lbrary?” 

“T couldn’t say, sir. Chesterton i 

“Don’t put it on to Chesterton.” 

“T was thinking,” said Lizzie, who was more stout- 
hearted than the parlourmaid and didn’t take cover 
quite so frequently in dumbness, “I was thinking 
p’raps Chesterton knew. I don’t do the tea, sir.” 

“Send Chesterton,” said Wemyss. 

Lizzie disappeared with the quickness of relief. 
Lucy, with a nervous little movement, stooped and 





picked up Wuthering Heights, which was still lying face 
downward on the floor, 

“Yes,” said Wemyss. “I like the way you treat 
books.” 

She put it back on its shelf. “I went to sleep, and 
it fell down,” she said. ‘‘Everard,’’ she went on quickly, 
“T must go and get a handkerchief. Ill join you in 
the library.” 

“I’m not going into the library. I’m going to have 
tea here. Why should I have tea in the library?” 


4 


222 VERA 


39 





“T only thought as it was there 

“T suppose I can have tea where I like in my own 
house?” 

“But of course. Well, then, ll go and get a hand- 
kerchief and come back here.” 

‘You can do that some other time. Don’t be so 
restless.” 

“But I—I want a handkerchief—this minute,” said 
Lucy. 

“Nonsense; here, have mine,” said Wemyss; and 
anyhow it was too late to escape, for there in the door 
stood Chesterton. 

She was the parlourmaid. Her name has not till 
now been mentioned, It was Chesterton. 

‘Why is tea in the library?” Wemyss asked. 

“T understood, sir, tea was always to be in the 
library,” said Chesterton. 

“That was while I was by myself. I suppose it 
wouldn’t have occurred to you to inquire whether I 
still wished it there now that I am not by myself.” 

This floored Chesterton. Her ignorance of the right 
answer was complete. She therefore said nothing, and 
merely stood. 

But he didn’t let her off. “Would it?” he asked 
suddenly. 

“No sir,” she said, dimly feeling that “Yes sir” 
would land her in difficulties. 

“No. Quite so. It wouldn’t. Well, you will now 
go and fetch that tea and bring it up here. Stop a 


VERA 223 


minute, stop a minute—don’t be in such a hurry, please. 
How long has it been made?” 

“Since half-past four, sir.” 

“Then you will make fresh tea, and you will 
make fresh toast, and you will cut fresh bread and 
butter.” 

es) sir.” 

“And another time you will have the goodness to 
ascertain my wishes before taking upon yourself to put 
the tea into any room you choose to think fit.” 

Pes-sir.” 

She waited, 

He waved. 

She went. 

“That’ll teach her,” said Wemyss, looking refreshed 
by the encounter, “If she thinks she’s going to get out 
of bringing tea up here by putting it ready somewhere 
else she’ll find she’s mistaken. Aren’t they a set? 
Arent they a set, little Love?” 

“I—don’t know,” said Lucy nervously. 

“You don’t know!” 

“T mean, I don’t know them yet. How can I know 
them when I’ve only just come?” 

“You soon will, then. A lazier set of careless, 
lying ii 

“Do tell me what that picture is, Everard,” she 
interrupted, quickly crossing the room and standing in 
front of it. ‘I’ve been wondering and wondering.” 

‘You can see what it is, It’s a picture.” 

“Yes, But where’s the place?” 





224 VERA 


“T’ve no idea. It’s one of Vera’s. She didn’t 
condescend to explain it.” 

“You mean she painted it?” 

“J daresay. She was always painting.” 

Wemyss, who had been filling his pipe, lit it and 
stood smoking in front of the fire, occasionally looking 
at his watch, while Lucy stared at the picture. Lovely, 
lovely to run through that door out into the open, into 
the warmth and sunshine, further and _ further 
away. ... 

It was the only picture in the room; indeed, the 
room was oddly bare,—a thin room, with no carpet on 
its slippery floor, only some infrequent rugs, and no 
curtains. But there had been curtains, for there were 
the rods with rings on them, so that somebody must 
have taken Vera’s curtains away. Lucy had been 
strangely perturbed when she noticed this. It was 
Vera’s room. Her curtains oughtn’t to have been 
touched. 

The long wall opposite the fireplace had nothing at 
all on its sand-coloured surface from the door to the 
window except a tall narrow looking-glass in a queerly 
carved black frame, and the picture. But how that one 
picture glowed. What glorious weather they were 
having init! It wasn’t anywhere in England, she was 
sure. It was a brilliant, sunlit place, with a lot of 
almond trees in full blossom,—an orchard of them, 
apparently, standing in grass that was full of little 
flowers, very gay little flowers of kinds she didn’t 
know. And through the open door in the wall there 


VERA 225 


was an amazing stretch of hot, vivid country. It 
stretched on and on till it melted into an ever so far 
away lovely blue. There was an effect of immense 
spaciousness, of huge freedom. One could feel oneself 
running out into it with one’s face to the sun, flinging 
up one’s arms in an ecstasy of release, of escape. .. . 

“It’s somewhere abroad,” she said, after a silence. 

“IT daresay,” said Wemyss. 

“Used you to travel much?” she asked, still examin- 
ing the picture, fascinated. 

“She refused to.” 

“She refused to?’? echoed Lucy, turning round. 

She looked at him wonderingly. That seemed not 
only unkind of Vera, but extraordinarily—yes, ener- 
getic. The exertion required for refusing Everard 
something he wanted was surely enormous, was surely 
greater than any but the most robust-minded wife could 
embark upon. She had had one small experience of 
what disappointing him meant in that question of 
Christmas, and she hadn’t been living with him then, 
and she had had all the nights to recover in; yet the 
effect of that one experience had been to make her give 
in at once when next he wanted something, and it was 
because of last Christmas that she was standing mar- 
ried in that room instead of being still, as both she 
and her Aunt Dot had intended, six months off it. 

“Why did she refuse?” she asked, wondering. 

Wemyss didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, 
“T was going to say you had better ask her, but you 
can’t very well do that, can you.” 


226 VERA 


Lucy stood looking at him. “Yes,” she said, “she 


does seem extraordinarily near, doesn’t she. This 
bP 





room is full 

*‘Now Lucy [ll have none of that. Come here.” 

He held out his hand. She crossed over obediently 
and took it. 

He pulled her close and ruffled her hair. He was 
in high spirits again. His encounters with the servants 
had exhilarated him. 

““Who’s my duddely-umpty little girl??? he asked. 
“Tell me who’s my duddely-umpty little girl. Quick. 
Tell me——” And he caught her round the waist and 
jumped her up and down. 

Chesterton bringing in the tea, arrived in the middle 
of a jump. 


XXIV 


P ANHERE appeared to be no tea-table. Chester- 
ton, her arms stretched taut holding the 
heavy tray, looked round. Evidently tea 

up there wasn’t usual. 

“Put it in the window,” said Wemyss, jerking his 
head towards the writing-table. 

“Oh ” began Lucy quickly; and stopped. 

“What's the matter?” asked Wemyss. 

“Won’t it—be draughty?”’ 

“Nonsense. Draughty. Do you suppose I’d tolerate 
windows in my house that let in draughts?” 

Chesterton, resting a corner of the tray on the table, 
was sweeping a clear space for it with her hand. Not 
that much sweeping was needed, for the table was big 
and all that was on it was the notepaper which earlier 

in the afternoon had been scattered on the floor, a 

rusty pen or two, some pencils whose ends had been 

gnawed as the pencils of a child at its lessons are 
gnawed, a neglected-looking inkpot, and a grey book 
with Household Accounts in dark lettering on its cover. 

Wemyss watched her while she arranged the tea- 

things, . 

“Take care, now—take care,” he said, when a cup 
rattled in its saucer. 





227 


228 VERA 


Chesterton, who had been taking care, took more 
of it; and le trop being l’ennemit du bien she was so 
unfortunate as to catch her cuff in the edge of the plate 
of bread and butter. 

The plate tilted up; the bread and butter slid off; 
and only by a practised quick movement did she stop 
the plate from following the bread and butter and 
smashing itself on the floor. 

‘There now,” said Wemyss. ‘‘See what you’ve done. 
Didn’t I tell you to be careful? It isn’t,’ he said, 
turning to Lucy, “as if I hadn’t told her to be careful.” 

Chesterton, on her knees, was picking up the bread 
and butter which lay—a habit she had observed in 
bread and butter under circumstances of this kind— 
butter downwards. 

“You will fetch a cloth,” said Wemyss. 

“Yes sir.” 

“And you will cut more bread and butter.” 

SCR BLT se 

‘That makes two plates of bread and butter wasted 
to-day entirely owing to your carelessness. They shall 





be stopped out of your Lucy, where are you 
going?” 

“To fetch a handkerchief. I must have a handker- 
chief, Everard. I can’t for ever use yours.” 

“You'll do nothing of the kind. Lizzie will bring 
you one. Come back at once. I won’t have you 
running in and out of the room the whole time. I 


never knew any one so restless, Ring the bell and tell 


VERA 229 


Lizzie to get you one. What is she for, I should like 
to know?” 

He then resumed and concluded his observations to 
Chesterton. “They shall be stopped out of your 
wages. That,” he said, “will teach you.” 

And Chesterton, who was used to this, and had long 
ago arranged with the cook that such stoppages should 
be added on to the butcher’s book, said, “Yes sir.” 

When she had gone—or rather withdrawn, for a 
plain word like gone doesn’t just describe the noiseless 
decorum with which Chesterton managed the doors of 
her entrances and exits—and when Lizzie, too, had gone 
after bringing a handkerchief, Lucy supposed they 
would now have tea; she supposed the moment had at 
last arrived for her to go and sit in that window. 

The table was at right angles to it, so that sitting at 
it you had nothing between one side of you and the 
great pane of glass that reached nearly to the floor. 
You could look sheer down on to the flags below. She 
thought it horrible, gruesome to have tea there, and the 
very first day, before she had had a moment’s time to 
get used to things. Such detachment on the part of 
Everard was either just stark wonderful—she had 
already found noble explanations for it—or it was so 
callous that she had no explanation for it at all; none, 
that is, that she dared think of. Once more she decided 
that his way was really the best and simplest way to 
meet the situation. You took the bull by the horns. 
You seized the nettle. You cleared the air. And 
though her images, she felt, were not what they 


230 VERA 


might be, neither was anything else that day what it 
might be. Everything appeared to reflect the confusion 
produced by Wemyss’s excessive lucidity of speech. 

“Shall I pour out the tea?” she asked presently, 
preparing, then, to take the bull by the horns; for he 
remained standing in front of the fire smoking in silence, 
“Just think,” she went on, making an effort to be gay, 
“this is the first time I shall pour out tea in my—” 

She was going to say “My own home,” but the-words 
wouldn’t come off her tongue. Wemyss had repeatedly 
during the day spoken of his home, but not once had 
he said “our’’ or “‘your”; and if ever a house didn’t feel 
as if it in the very least belonged, too, to her, it was 
this one. 

““Not yet,” he said briefly. 

She wondered. ‘‘Not yet?” she repeated. 

“Tm waiting for the bread and butter.” 

“But won’t the tea get cold?” 

“No doubt. And it’ll be entirely that fool’s fault.” 

“But °? began Lucy, after a silence. 

“Buts again?” 

“T was only thinking that if we had it now it wouldn’t 
be cold.” 

‘She must be taught her lesson.” 

Again she wondered. ‘Won’t it rather be a lesson 
to us?” she asked. 

“For God’s sake, Lucy, don’t argue. Things have 
to be done properly in my house. You’ve had no 
experience of a properly managed household. All that 
set you were brought up in—why, one only had to 





VERA 231 


look at them to see what a hugger-mugger way they 
probably lived. It’s entirely the careless fool’s own 
fault that the tea will be cold. J didn’t ask her to 
throw the bread and butter on the floor, did I?” 

And as she said nothing, he asked again. ‘Did I?” 
he asked. 

“No,” said Lucy. 

“Well then,” said Wemyss. 

They waited in silence, 

Chesterton arrived. She put the fresh bread and 
butter on the table, and then wiped the floor with a 
cloth she had brought. 

Wemyss watched her closely. When she had done— 
and Chesterton being good at her work, scrutinise as he 
might he could see no sign on the floor of overlooked 
butter—he said, “You will now take the teapot down 
and bring some hot tea.” 

“Yes sir,’ said Chesterton, removing the teapot. 

A line of a hymn her nurse used to sing came into 
Lucy’s head when she saw the teapot going. It was: 


What various hindrances we meet— 


and she thought the next line, which she didn’t remem- 
ber, must have been: 


Before at tea ourselves we seat. 


But though one portion of her mind was repeating 
this with nervous levity, the other was full of concern 
for the number of journeys up and down all those 
stairs the parlourmaid was being obliged to make. It 


232 VERA 


was—well, thoughtless of Everard to make her go up 
and down so often. Probably he didn’t realise—of 
course he didn’t—how very many stairs there were. 
When and how could she talk to him about things like 
this? When would he be in such a mood that she 
would be able to do so without making them worse? 
And how, in what words sufficiently tactful, sufficiently 
gentle, would she be able to avoid his being offended? 
She must manage somehow. But tact—management 
—prudence—all these she had not yet in her hfe 
needed. Had she the smallest natural gift for them? 
Besides, each of them applied to love seemed to her 
an insult. She had supposed that love, real love, 
needed none of these protections. She had thought 
it was a simple, sturdy growth that could stand any- 
thing. . . . Why, here was the parlourmaid already, 
teapot and all. How very quick she had been! 

Chesterton, however, hadn’t so much been quick as 
tactful, managing, and prudent. She had been practis- 
ing these qualities on the other side of the door, whither 
she had taken the teapot and quietly waited with it 
a few minutes, and whence she now brought it back. 
She placed it on the table with admirable composure; 
and when Wemyss, on her politely asking whether 
there were anything else he required, said, “Yes. You 
will now take away that toast and bring fresh,” she 
took the toast also only as far as the other side of 
the door, and waited with it there a little. 

Lucy now hoped they would have tea. “Shall I 
pour it out?” she asked after a moment a little 


VERA 233 


anxiously, for he still didn’t move and she began to be 
afraid the toast might be going to be the next 
hindrance; in which case they would go round and round 
for the rest of the day, never catching up the tea at 
all. 

But he did go over and sit down at the table, fol- 
lowed by her who hardly now noticed its position, so 
much surprised and absorbed was she by his methods 
of housekeeping. 

‘“Isn’t it monstrous,” he said, sitting down heavily, 


“how we’ve been kept waiting for such a simple thing 
39 





as tea. I tell you they’re the most slovenly 

There was Chesterton again, bearing the toast-rack 
balanced on the tip of a respectful finger. 

This time even Lucy realised that it must be the 
same toast, and her hand, lifted in the act of pouring 
out tea, trembled, for she feared the explosion that 
was bound to come. 

How extraordinary! There was no_ explosion. 
Everard hadn’t—it seemed incredible—noticed. His 
attention was so much fixed on what she was doing with 
his cup, he was watching her so carefully lest she should 
fill it a hair’s-breadth fuller than he liked, that all he 
said to Chesterton as she put the toast on the table was, 
‘Let this be a lesson to you.” But there was no gusto 
in it; it was quite mechanical. 

“Yes sir,” said Chesterton. 

She waited. 

He waved. 

She went. 


234 VERA 


The door hadn’t been shut an instant before Wemyss 
exclaimed, ‘‘Why, if that slovenly hussy hasn’t for- 


gotten *7 And too much incensed to continue he 





stared at the tea-tray. 
“What? What?r” asked Lucy startled, also staring 
at the tea-tray. 
*“Why, the sugar.” 
“Oh, Pll call her back—she’s only just gone——” 
“Sit down, Lucy.” 





“But she’s just outside 4 
“Sit down, I tell you.” 
Lucy sat. 


Then she remembered that neither she nor Everard 
ever had sugar in their tea, so naturally there was no 
point in calling Chesterton back. 

“Oh, of course,” she said, smiling nervously, for 
what with one thing and another she was feeling 
shattered, “how stupid of me. We don’t want sugar.” 

Wemyss said nothing. He was studying his watch, 
timing Chesterton. ‘Then when the number of seconds 
needed to reach the kitchen had run out, he got up and 
rang the bell. 

In due course Lizzie appeared. It seemed that the 
rule was that this particular bell should be answered 
by Lizzie. 

*“‘Chesterton,” said Wemyss. 

In due course Chesterton appeared. She was less 
composed than when she brought back the teapot, than 
when she brought back the toast. She tried to hide it, 
but she was out of breath. 


VERA 235 


“Yes sir?” she said. 

Wemyss took no notice, and went on drinking his 
tea. 

Chesterton stood. 

After a period of silence Lucy thought that perhaps 
it was expected of her as mistress of the house to tell 
her about the sugar; but then as they neither of them 
wanted any.... 

After a further period of silence, during which she 
anxiously debated whether it was this that they were 
all waiting for, she thought that perhaps Everard 
hadn’t heard the parlourmaid come in; so she said— 
she was ashamed to hear how timidly it came out— 
“Chesterton is here, Everard.’’ 

He took no notice, and went on eating bread and 
butter. 

After a further period of anxious inward debate she 
concluded that it must after all be expected of her, as 
mistress of the house, to talk of the sugar; and the 
sugar was to be talked of not because they needed it 
but on principle. But what a roundabout way; how 
fatiguing and difficult. Why didn’t Everard say what 
he wanted, instead of leaving her to guess? 

“T think *? she stammered, flushing, for she was 
now very timid indeed, “‘you’ve forgotten the sugar, 
Chesterton.” 

‘Will you not interfere!’ exclaimed Wemyss very 
loud, putting down his cup with a bang. 

The flush on Lucy’s face vanished as if it had been 
knocked out. She sat quite still. If she moved, or 





236 VERA 


looked anywhere but at her plate, she knew she would 
begin to cry. The scenes she had dreaded had not 
included any with herself in the presence of servants. 
It hadn’t entered her head that these, too, were possible. 
She must hold on to herself; not move; not look. 
She sat absorbed in that one necessity, fiercely con- 
centrated. Chesterton must have gone away and come 
back again, for presently she was aware that sugar was 
being put on the tea-tray; and then she was aware that 
Everard was holding out his cup. 

“Give me some more tea, please,” he said, “and for 
God’s sake don’t sulk. If the servants forget their 
duties it’s neither your nor my business to tell them 
what they’ve forgotten,—they’ve just got to look and 
see, and if they don’t see they’ve just got to stand there 
looking till they do. It’s the only way to teach them. 
But for you to get sulking on the top of 1 ii 

She lifted the teapot with both hands, because one 
hand by itself too obviously shook. She succeeded in 
pouring out the tea without spilling it, and in stopping 
almost at the very moment when he said, “‘take care, 
take care—you’re filling it too full’ She even suc- 
ceeded after a minute or two in saying, holding care- 
fully on to her voice to keep it steady, “I’m—not 
sulking. D’ve—got a headache.’ 

And she thought desperately, ““The only thing to be 
done with marriage is to let it wash over one.” 





XXV 


resistingly. She couldn’t think any more. She 

couldn’t feel any more,—not that day. She 
really had a headache; and when the dusk came, and 
Wemyss turned on the lights, it was evident even to 
him that she had, for there was no colour at all in her 
face and her eyes were puffed and leaden. 

He had one of his sudden changes. ‘Come here,” 
he said, reaching out and drawing her on to his knee; 
and he held her face against his breast, and felt full of 
maternal instincts, and crooned over her. ‘“‘Was it a 
poor little baby,’’ he crooned. “Did it have a head- 
ache then ” And he put his great cool hand on her 
hot forehead and kept it there. 

Lucy gave up trying to understand anything at all 
any more. These swift changes,—she couldn’t keep up 
with them; she was tired, tired... . 

They sat like that in the chair before the fire, Wemyss 
holding his hand on her forehead and feeling full of 
maternal instincts, and she an unresisting blank, till he 
suddenly remembered he hadn’t shown her the drawing~ 
room yet. The afternoon had not proceeded on the 
lines laid down for it in his plans, but if they were 
quick there was still time for the drawing-room before 
dinner. 


\OR the rest of that day she let it wash; un- 





237 


238 VERA 


Accordingly she was abruptly lifted off his knee. 
“Come along, little Love,” he said briskly. ‘“‘Come 
along. Wake up. I want to show you something.” 

And the next thing she knew was that she was going 
downstairs, and presently she found herself standing in 
a big cold room, blinking in the bright lights he had 
switched on at the door. 

“This,” he said, holding her by the arm, “is the 
drawing-room. Isn’t it a fine room.” And he explained 
the piano, and told her how he had found a button off, 
and he pointed out the roll of rugs in a distant corner 
which, unrolled, decorated the parquet floor, and he 
drew her attention to the curtains,—he had no objec- 
tions to curtains in a drawing-room, he said, because 
a drawing-room was anyhow a room of concessions; 
and he asked her at the end, as he had asked her at 
the beginning, if she didn’t think it a fine room. 

Lucy said it was a very fine room. 

‘**You’ll remember to put the cover on properly when 
you’ve finished playing the piano, won’t you,” he said. 

“Yes I will,’? said Lucy. ‘Only I don’t play,” she 
added, remembering that she didn’t. 

“That’s all right then,’’ he said, relieved. 

They were still standing admiring the proportions 
of the room, its marble fireplace and the brilliancy of 
its lighting—“The test of good lighting,’ said Wemyss, 
‘is that there shouldn’t be a corner of a room in which 
a man of eighty can’t read his newspaper’’—when the 
gong began. 

“Good Lord,” he said, looking at his watch, “itll 


VERA 239 


be dinner in ten minutes. Why, we’ve had nothing at 
all of the afternoon, and I’d planned to show you so 
many things. Ah,” he said, turning and shaking his 
head at her, his voice changing to sorrow, “whose fault 
has that been?” 

“Mine,” said Lucy. 

He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face, 
gazing at it and shaking his head slowly. The light, 
streaming into her swollen eyes, hurt them and made 
her blink. 

“Ah, my Lucy,” he said fondly, “little waster of 
happiness—isn’t it better simply to love your Everard 
than make him unhappy?” 

“Much better,” said Lucy, blinking. 

There was no dressing for dinner at The Willows, for 
that, explained Wemyss, was the great joy of home, 
that you needn’t ever do anything you don’t want to 
in it, and therefore, he said, ten minutes’ warning was 
ample for just washing one’s hands, They washed 
their hands together in the big bedroom, because 
Wemyss disapproved of dressing-rooms at home even 
more strongly than on honeymoons in hotels. ‘“‘No- 
body’s going to separate me from my own woman,” he 
said, drying his hands and eyeing her with proud pos- 
sessiveness while she dried hers; their basins stood side 
by side on the brown mottled marble of the washstand. 
“Are they?” he said, as she dried in silence. 

“No,” said Lucy. 

‘““How’s the head?” he said. 

“Better,” she said. 


240 VERA 


“Who’s got a forgiving husband?” he said. 

‘*T have,” she said. 

“Smile at me,” he said. 

She smiled at him. 

At dinner it was Vera who smiled, her changeless 
little strangled smile, with her eyes on Lucy. Lucy’s 
seat had its back to Vera, but she knew she had only 
to turn her head to see her eyes fixed on her, smiling. 
No one else smiled; only Vera. 

Lucy bent her head over her plate, trying to escape 
the unshaded light that beat down on her eyes, sore 
with crying, and hurt. In front of her was the bowl of 
kingcups, the birthday flowers. Just behind Wemyss 
stood Chesterton, in an attitude of strained attention. 
Dimly through Lucy’s head floated thoughts: Seeing 
that Everard invariably spent his birthdays at The 
Willows, on that day last year at that hour Vera was 
sitting where she, Lucy, now was, with the kingcups 
glistening in front of her, and Everard tucking his table 
napkin into his waistcoat, and Chesterton waiting till 
he was quite ready to take the cover off the soup; just 
as Lucy was seeing these things this year Vera saw them 
last year; Vera still had three months of life ahead of 
her then,—three more months of dinners, and Chester- 
ton, and Everard tucking in his napkin. How queer. 
What a dream it all was. On that last of his birthdays 
at which Vera would ever be present, did any thought 
of his next birthday cross her mind? How strange 
it would have seemed to her if she could have seen 
ahead, and seen her, Lucy, sitting in her chair. The 


VERA 241 


same chair; everything just the same; except the wife. 
“Souvent femme varie,” floated vaguely across her tired 
brain. She ate her soup sitting all crooked with fatigue 
. . . life was exactly like a dream... . 

Wemyss, absorbed in the scrutiny of his food and 
the behaviour of Chesterton, had no time to notice 
anything Lucy might be doing. It was the rule that 
Chesterton, at meals, should not for an instant leave 
the room. The farthest she was allowed was a door 
in the dark corner opposite the door into the hall, 
through which at intervals Lizzie’s arm thrust dishes. 
It was the rule that Lizzie shouldn’t come into the 
room, but, stationary on the other side of this door, 
her function was to thrust dishes through it; and to her 
from the kitchen, pattering ceaselessly to and fro, came 
the tweeny bringing the dishes. This had all been 
thought out and arranged very carefully years ago by 
| Wemyss, and ought to have worked without a hitch; 
but sometimes there were hitches, and Lizzie’s arm was 
a minute late thrusting in a dish. When this happened 
Chesterton, kept waiting and conscious of Wemyss 
enormously waiting at the end of the table, would put 
her head round the door and hiss at Lizzie, who then 
hurried to the kitchen and hissed at the tweeny, who for 
‘her part didn’t dare hiss at the cook. 

To-night, however, nothing happened that was not 
perfect. From the way Chesterton had behaved about 
the tea, and the way Lizzie had behaved about the 
window, Wemyss could see that during his four weeks’ 
absence his household had been getting out of hand, 


242 VERA 


and he was therefore more watchful than ever, deter- 
mined to pass nothing over. On this occasion he 
watched in vain. Things went smoothly from start 
to finish. The tweeny ran, Lizzie thrust, Chesterton 
deposited, dead on time. Every dish was hot and 
punctual, or cold and punctual, according to what was 
expected of it; and Wemyss going out of the dining- 
room at the end, holding Lucy by the arm, couldn’t 
but feel he had dined very well. Perhaps, though, his 
father’s photograph hadn’t been dusted,—it would 
be just like them to have disregarded his instructions. 
He went back to look, and Lucy, since he was holding 
her by the arm, went too. No, they had even done 
that; and there was nothing further to be said except, 
with great sternness to Chesterton, eyeing her threat- 
eningly, “Coffee at once.” 

The evening was spent in the library reading 
Wemyss’s school reports, and looking at photographs 
of him in his various stages,—naked and crowing; with 
ringlets, in a frock; in knickerbockers, holding a hoop; 
a stout schoolboy; a tall and slender youth; thickening; 
still thickening; thick,—and they went to bed at ten 
o’clock. 

Somewhere round midnight Lucy discovered that the 
distances of the treble bed softened sound; either that, 
or she was too tired to hear anything, for she dropped 
out of consciousness with the heaviness of a released 
stone. | 

Next day it was finer. ‘There were gleams of sun; 
and though the wind still blew, the rain held off except 


VERA 243 


for occasional spatterings. They got up very late— 
breakfast on Sundays at The Willows was not till 
eleven—and went and inspected the chickens. By the 
time they had done that, and walked round the garden, 
and stood on the edge of the river throwing sticks 
into it and watching the pace at which they were 
whirled away on its muddy and disturbed surface, it 
was luncheon time. After luncheon they walked along 
the towpath, one behind the other because it was 
narrow and the grass at the sides was wet. Wemyss 
walked slowly, and the wind was cold. Lucy kept 
close to his heels, seeking shelter under, as it were, his 
lee. ‘Talk wasn’t possible because of the narrow path 
and the blustering wind, but every now and then 
Wemyss looked down over his shoulder at her. “Still 
there?” he asked; and Lucy said she was. 

They had tea punctually at half-past four up in 
Vera’s sitting-room, but without, this time, a fire— 
Wemyss had rectified Lizzie’s tendency to be officious— 
and after tea he took her out again to show her how 
his electricity was made, while the gardener who saw 
to the machinery, and the boy who saw to the gardener, 
stood by in attendance. 

There was a cold sunset,—a narrow strip of gold 
below heavy clouds, like a sullen, half-open eye. The 
prudent cows dotted the fields motionlessly, lying on 
their dry bits of grass. The wind blew straight across 
from the sunset through Lucy’s coat, wrap herself in it 
as tightly as she might, while they loitered among out- 
houses and examined the durability of the railings. Her 


244 VERA 


headache, in spite of her good night, hadn’t gone, and 
by dinner time her throat felt sore. She said nothing 
to Wemyss, because she was sure she would be well 
in the morning. Her colds never lasted. Besides she 
knew, for he had often told her, how much he was 
bored by the sick. 

At dinner her cheeks were very red and her eyes 
very bright. 

*“Who’s my pretty little girl?” said Wemyss, struck 
by her. 

Indeed he was altogether pleased with her. She 
had been his own Lucy throughout the day, so gentle 
and sweet, and hadn’t once said But, or tried to go out 
of rooms. Unquestioningly acquiescent she had been; 
and now so pretty, with the light full on her, showing 
up her lovely colouring. | 

““Who’s my pretty little girl?” he said again, laying 
his hand on hers, while Chesterton looked down her 
nose. 

Then he noticed she had a knitted scarf round her 
shoulders, and he said, ‘““‘Whatever have you got that 
thing on in here for?” 

“Ym cold,” said Lucy. 

“Cold! Nonsense. You’re as warm as toast. Feel 
my hand compared to yours.” 

Then she did tell him she thought she had caught 
cold, and he said, withdrawing his hand and his face 
falling, “Well, if you have it’s only what you deserve 
when you recollect what you did yesterday.” 


VERA 245 


“T suppose it is,” agreed Lucy; and assured him her 
colds were all over in twenty-four hours, 

Afterwards in the library when they were alone, she 
asked if she hadn’t better sleep by herself in case he 
caught her cold, but Wemyss wouldn’t hear of such a 
thing. Not only, he said, he never caught colds and 
didn’t believe any one else who was sensible ever did, but 
it would take more than a cold to separate him from his 
wife. Besides, though of course she richly deserved a 
cold after yesterday—‘Who’s a shameless little bag- 
gage,” he said, pinching her ear, “coming down with 
only a blanket on ” somehow, though he had been 
so angry at the time, the recollection of that pleased 
him—he could see no signs of her having got one. She 





didn’t sneeze, she didn’t blow her nose—— 

Lucy agreed, and said she didn’t suppose it was 
anything really, and she was sure she would be all 
right in the morning. 

““Yes—and you know we catch the early train up,” 
said Wemyss. “Leave here at nine sharp, mind.” 

“Yes,” said Lucy. And presently, for she was feel- 
ing very uncomfortable and hot and cold in turns, and 
had a great longing to creep away and be alone for 
a little while, she said that perhaps, although she knew 
it was very early, she had better go to bed. 

“All right,” said Wemyss, getting up briskly. “Vl 


come too.” 


XXVI 


E found her, however, very trying that night, 

H the way she would keep on turning round, 

and it reached such a pitch of discomfort to 

sleep with her, or rather endeavour to sleep with her, 

for as the night went on she paid less and less atten- 

tion to his requests that she should keep still, that at 

about two o’clock, staggering with sleepiness, he got up 

and went into a spare room, trailing the quilt after 

him and carrying his pillows, and finished the night in 
peace. 

When he woke at seven he couldn’t make out at 
first where he was, nor why, on stretching out his arm, 
he found no wife to be gathered in. Then he remembered, 
and he felt most injured that he should have been 
turned out of his own bed. If Lucy imagined she was 
going to be allowed to develop the same restlessness 
at night that was characteristic of her by day, she 
was mistaken; and he got up to go and tell her so. 

He found her asleep in a very untidy position, the 
clothes all dragged over to her side of the bed and 
pulled up round her. He pulled them back again, and 
she woke up, and he got into bed and said, “Come here,” 
stretching out his arm, and she didn’t come. 

Then he looked at her more closely, and she, looking 

246 


VERA 247 


at him with heavy eyes, said something husky. It 
was evident she had a very tiresome cold. 

“What an untruth you told me,” he exclaimed, 
“about not having a cold in the morning!” 

She again said something husky. It was evident 
she had a very tiresome sore throat. 

“It’s getting on for half-past seven,” said Wemyss. 
“We've got to leave the house at nine sharp, mind.” 

Was it possible that she wouldn’t leave the house 
at nine sharp? The thought that she wouldn’t was too 
exasperating to consider. He go up to London alone? 
On this the first occasion of going up after his mar- 
riage? He be alone in Lancaster Gate, just as if he 
hadn’t a wife at all? What was the good of a wife if 
she didn’t go up to London with one? And all this to 
come upon him because of her conduct on his birthday. 

“Well,” he said, sitting up in bed and looking down 
at her, “I hope you’re pleased with the result of your 
behaviour.” 

But it was no use saying things to somebody who 
merely made husky noises. 

He got out of bed and jerked up the blinds. “Such 
a beautiful day, too,” he said indignantly. 

When at a quarter to nine the station cab arrived, 
he went up to the bedroom hoping that he would find 
her after all dressed and sensible and ready to go, but 
there she was just as he had left her when he went to 
have his breakfast, dozing and inert in the tumbled bed. 

“You'd better follow me by the afternoon train,” 
he said, after staring down at her in silence. “T’ll 


248 VERA 


tell the cab. But in any case,” he said, as she didn’t 
answer, “in any case, Lucy, I expect you to-morrow.” 

She opened her eyes and looked at him languidly. 

“Do you hear?” he said. 

She made a husky noise. 

“Good-bye,” he said shortly, stooping and giving 
the top of her head a brief, disgusted kiss. The way 
the consequences of folly fell always on somebody else 
and punished him . . . Wemyss could hardly give his 
Times the proper attention in the train for thinking 
of it. 

That day Miss Entwhistle, aware of the return from 
the honeymoon on the Friday, and of the week-end to 
be spent at The Willows, and of the coming up to 
Lancaster Gate early on the Monday morning for the 
inside of the week, waited till twelve o’clock, so as to 
allow plenty of time for Wemyss no longer to be in the 
house, and then telephoned. Lucy and she were to 
lunch together. Lucy had written to say so, and Miss 
Entwhistle wanted to know if she wouldn’t soon be 
round. She longed extraordinarily to fold that darling 
little child in her arms again. It seemed an eternity 
since she saw her radiantly disappearing in the taxi; 
and the letters she had hoped to get during the honey- 
moon hadn’t been letters at all, but picture postcards. 

A man’s voice answered her,—not Wemyss’s. It was, 
she recognised, the voice of the pale servant, who with . 
his wife attended to Lancaster Gate house. They 
inhabited the basement, and emerged from it up into 
the light only if they were obliged. Bells obliged them 


VERA 249 


to emerge, and Wemyss’s bath and breakfast, and after 
his departure to his office the making of his bed; but 
then the shades gathered round them again till next 
morning, because for a long while now once he had left 
the house he hadn’t come back till after they were in 
bed. His re-marriage was going to disturb them, they 
were afraid, and the pale wife had forebodings about 
meals to be cooked; but at the worst the disturbance — 
would only be for the three inside days of the week, 
and anything could be borne when one had from Friday 
to Monday to oneself; and as the morning went on, 
and no one arrived from Strorley, they began to take 
heart, and had almost quite taken it when the telephone 
bell rang. 

It didn’t do it very often, for Wemyss had his other 
addresses, at the office, at the club, so that Twite, 
wanting in practise, was not very good at dealing with 
it. Also the shrill bell vibrating through the empty 
house, so insistent, so living, never failed to agitate 
both Twites. It seemed to them uncanny; and Mrs. 
Twite, watching Twite being drawn up by it out of his 
shadows, like some quiet fish sucked irresistibly up to 
gasp on the surface, was each time thankful that she 
hadn’t been born a man. 

She always went and listened at the bottom of the 
kitchen stairs, not knowing what mightn’t happen to 
Twite up there alone with that voice, and on this 
occasion she heard the following: 

“No, ma’am, not yet, ma’am.” 

“T couldn’t say, ma’am.” 


250 VERA 


“No, no news, ma’am.” 

“Oh yes, ma’am, on Friday night.” 

“Yes, ma’am, first thing Saturday.” 

“Yes, it is, ma’am—very strange, ma’am.” 

And then there was silence. He was writing, she 
knew, on the pad provided by Wemyss for the purpose. 

This was the most trying part of Twite’s duties. 
Any message had to be written down and left on the 
hall table, complete with the time of its delivery, for 
Wemyss to see when he came in at night. Twite was 
not a facile writer. Words confused him. He was 
never sure how they were spelt. Also he found it very 
difficult to remember what had been said, for there was 
a hurry and an urgency about a voice on the telephone 
that excited him and prevented his giving the message 
his undivided attention. Besides, when was a message 
not a message? Wemyss’s orders were to write down 
messages. Suppose they weren’t messages, must he 
still write? Was this, for instance, a message? 

He thought he had best be on the safe side, and 
laboriously wrote it down: 


Miss Henwissel rang up sir to know if you was come and 
if so when you was coming and what orders we ad and said it 
was very strange 12.15. 


He had only just put this on the table and was 
about to descend to his quiet shades when off the thing 
started again. 

This time it was Wemyss. 

“Back to-night late as usual,” he said. 


VERA 251 


“Yes sir,” said Twite. ‘“There’s just been a ee 

But he addressed emptiness. 

Meanwhile Miss Entwhistle, after a period of reflec- 
tion, was ringing up Strorley 19. The voice of Chester- 





ton, composed and efficient, replied; and the effect of 
her replies was to make Miss Entwhistle countermand 
lunch and pack a small bag and go to Paddington. 
Trains to Strorley at that hour were infrequent and 
slow, and it wasn’t till nearly five that she drove down 
the oozy lane in the station cab and, turning in at the 
white gate, arrived at The Willows. That sooner or 
later she would have to arrive at The Willows now that 
she was related to it by marriage was certain, and she 
had quite made up her mind, during her four weeks’ 
peace since the wedding, that she was going to dismiss 
all foolish prejudices against the place from her mind 
and arrive at it, when she did arrive, with a stout heart 
and an unclouded countenance. After all, there was 
much in that mot of her nephew’s: “Somebody has died 
everywhere.” Yet, as the cab heaved her nearer to the 
place along the oozy lane, she did wish that it wasn’t 
in just this house that Lucy lay in bed. Also she had 
misgivings at being there uninvited. In a case of serious 
illness naturally such misgivings wouldn’t exist; but 
the maid’s voice on the telephone had only said Mrs. 
Wemyss had a cold and was staying in bed, and Mr. 
Wemyss had gone up to London by the usual train. 
It couldn’t be much that was wrong, or he wouldn’t 
have gone. MHadn’t she, she thought uneasily as she 
found herself uninvited within Wemyss’s gates, perhaps 


252 VERA 


been a little impulsive? Yet the idea of that child 
alone in the sinister house—— 

She peered out of the cab window. Not at all 
sinister, she said, correcting herself severely; all most 
neat. Perfect order. Shrubs as they should be. 
Strong railings. Nice cows. 

The cab stopped. Chesterton came down the steps 
and opened its door. Nice parlourmaid. Most normal. 

“How is Mrs. Wemyss?”’ asked Miss Entwhistle. 

“About the same I believe, ma’am,” said Chesterton; 
and inquired if she should pay the man. 

Miss Entwhistle paid the man, and then proceeded 
up the steps followed by Chesterton carrying her bag. 
Fine steps. Handsome house. 

“Does she know I’m coming?” 

**I believe the housemaid did mention it, ma’am.” 

Nice roomy hall. With a fire it might be quite 
warm. Fine windows. Good staircase. 

“Do you wish for tea, ma’am?”’ 

“No thank you. I should like to go up at once, if 
I may.” 

“If you please, ma’am.” 

At the turn of the stairs, where the gong was, Miss 
Entwhistle stood aside and let Chesterton precede her. 
“Perhaps you had better go and tell Mrs. Wemyss I am 
here,” she said. 

“If you please, ma’am.’ 

Miss Entwhistle waited, gazing at the gong with the 
same benevolence she had brought to bear on everything 
else. Fine gong. She also gazed at the antlers on the 


VERA 2538 


wall, for the wall continued to bristle with antlers right 
up to the top of the house. Magnificent collection. 


“If you please, ma’am,” 


said Chesterton, reappear- 
ing, tiptoeing gingerly to the head of the stairs. 

Miss Entwhistle went up. Chesterton ushered her 
into the bedroom, closing the door softly behind her. 

Miss Entwhistle knew Lucy was small, but not how 
small till she saw her in the treble bed. There really did 
appear to be nothing of her except a little round head. 
‘Why, but you’ve shrunk!” was her first exclamation. 

Lucy, who was tucked up to her chin by Lizzie, 
besides having a wet bandage encased in flannel round 
her throat, could only move her eyes and smile. She 
was on the side cf the bed farthest from the door, and 
Miss Entwhistle had to walk round it to reach her. 
She was stili hoarse, but not as voiceless as when 
Wemyss left in the morning, for Lizzie had been dili- 
gently plying her with things like hot honey, and her 
face, as her eyes followed Miss Entwhistle’s approach, 
was one immense smile. It really seemed too wonder- 
ful to be with Aunt Dot again; and there was a peace 
about being ill, a relaxation from strain, that had made 
her quiet day, alone in bed, seem sheer bliss. It was 
so plain that she couldn’t move, that she couldn’t do 
anything, couldn’t get up and go in trains, that her 
conscience was at rest in regard to Everard; and she 
lay in the blessed silence after he left, not minding 
how much her limbs ached because of the delicious tran- 
quillity of her mind. The window was open, and in 


the garden the birds were busy. The wind had dropped. 


254 VERA 


Except for the birds there was no sound. Divine quiet. 
Divine peace. The luxury of it after the week-end, 
after the birthday, after the honeymoon, was extraordi- 
nary. Just to be in bed by oneself seemed an amazingly 
felicitous condition. 

“Lovely of you to come,” she said hoarsely, smiling 
broadly and looking so unmistakably contented that 
Miss Entwhistle, as she bent over her and kissed her hot 
forehead, thought, “It’s a success. He’s making her 
happy.” 

“You darling little thing,” she said, smoothing back 
her hair. “Fancy seeing you again like this!” 

“Yes,” said Lucy, heavy-eyed and smiling. “Lovely,” 
she whispered, “to see you. Tea, Aunt Dot?’ 

It was evidently difficult for her to speak, and her 
forehead was extremely hot. 

“No, I don’t want tea.” 

“You'll stay?” 

“Yes,” said Miss Entwhistle, sitting down by the 
pillow and continuing to smooth back her hair. “Of 
course I'l stay. How did you manage to catch such a 
cold, I wonder?” 

She was left to wonder, undisturbed by any explana- 
tions of Lucy’s. Indeed it was as much as Lucy could 
manage to bring out the most necessary words. She 
lay contentedly with her eyes shut, having her hair 
stroked back, and said as little as possible. 

“Everard *? said Miss Entwhistle, stroking 
gently, “is he coming back to-night?” 

“No,” whispered Lucy contentedly. 





VERA 255 


Aunt Dot stroked in silence. 

“Has your temperature been taken?’ she asked 
presently. 

**No,” whispered Lucy contentedly. 

“Oughtn’t you”—after another pause—“to see a 
doctor?” 

“No,” whispered Lucy contentedly. Delicious, simply 
delicious, to lie like that having one’s hair stroked back 
by Aunt Dot, the dear, the kind, the comprehensible. 

“So sweet of you to come,” she whispered again. 

Well, thought Miss Entwhistle as she sat there softly 
stroking and watching Lucy’s face of complete content 
while she dozed off—even after she was asleep the 
corners of her mouth still were tucked up in a smile— 
it was plain that Everard was making the child happy. 
In that case he certainly must be all that Lucy had 
assured her he was, and she, Miss Entwhistle, would 
no doubt very quickly now get fond of him. Of course 
she would. No doubt whatever. And what a comfort, 
what a relief, to find the child happy. Backgrounds 
didn’t matter where there was happiness. Houses, 
indeed. What did it matter if they weren’t the sort 
of houses you would, left to yourself, choose so long as 
in them dwelt happiness? What did it matter what 
their past had been so long as their present was 
illuminated by contentment? And as for furniture, 
why, that only became of interest, of importance, when 
life had nothing else in it. Loveless lives, empty lives, 
filled themselves in their despair with beautiful furni- 
ture. If you were really happy you had antlers. 


256 VERA 


In this spirit, while she stroked and Lucy slept, 
Miss Entwhistle’s eye, full of benevolence, wandered 
round the room. The objects in it, after her own small 
bedroom in Eaton Terrace and its necessarily small 
furniture, all seemed to her gigantic. Especially the 
bed. She had never seen a bed like it before, though 
she had heard of such beds in history. Didn’t Og the 
King of Bashan have one? But what an excellent 
plan, for then you could get away from each other. 
Most sensible. Most wholesome. And a certain bleak- 
ness about the room would soon go when Lucy’s little 
things got more strewn about,—her books, and photo- 
graphs, and pretty dressing-table silver. 

Miss Entwhistle’s eye arrived at and dwelt on the 
dressing-table. On it were two oval wooden-backed 
brushes without handles. Hairbrushes. Men’s. Also 
shaving things. And, hanging over one side of the 
looking-glass, were three neckties. 

She quickly recovered. Most friendly. Most com- 
panionable. But a feeling of not being in Lucy’s room 
at all took possession of her, and she fidgeted a little. 
With no business to be there whatever, she was in a 
strange man’s bedroom. She averted her eyes from 
Wemyss’s toilet arrangements,—they were the last 
things she wanted to see; and, in averting them, they 
fell on the washstand with its two basins and on an 
enormous red-brown indiarubber sponge. No such 
sponge was ever Lucy’s. The conclusion was forced 
upon her that Lucy and Everard washed side by side. 

From this, too, she presently recovered. After all, 


VERA 257 


marriage was marriage, and you did things in marriage 
that you would never dream of doing single. She 
averted her eyes from the washstand. The last thing 
she wanted to do was to become familiar with Wemyss’s 
sponge. 

Her eyes, growing more and more determined in 
their benevolence, gazed out of the window. How the 
days were lengthening. And really a beautiful look- 
out, with the late afternoon light reflected on the hills 
across the river. Birds, too, twittering in the garden,— 
everything most pleasant and complete. And such a 
nice big window. Lots of air and light. It reached 
nearly to the floor. Two housemaids at least, and 
strong ones, would be needed to open or shut it,—ah 
no, there were cords. A thought struck her: This 
couldn’t be the room, that couldn’t be the window, 
where—— 

She averted her eyes from the window, and fixed 
them on what seemed to be the only satisfactory resting- 
place for them, the contented face on the pillow. Dear 
little loved face. And the dear, pretty hair,—how 
pretty young hair was, so soft and thick. No, of 
course it wasn’t the window; that tragic room was prob- 
ably not used at all now. How in the world had the 
child got such a cold. She could hear by her breathing 
that her chest was stuffed up, but evidently it wasn’t 
worrying her, or she wouldn’t in her sleep look so much 
pleased. Yes; that room was either shut up now and 
never used, or—she couldn’t help being struck by yet 
another thought—it was a spare room. If so, Miss 


258 VERA 


Entwhistle said to herself, it would no doubt be her 
fate to sleep in it. Dear me, she thought, taken aback. 

But from this also she presently recovered; and 
remembering her determination to eject all prejudices 
merely remarked to herself, ““Well, well.” And, after a 
pause, was able to add benevolently, ““A house of varied 
interest.” 


XXVIT 


ATER on in the dining-room, when she was 
reluctantly eating the meal prepared for her 
—Lucy still slept, or she would have asked to 

be allowed to have a biscuit by her bedside—Miss Ent- 
whistle said to Chesterton, who attended her, Would 
she let her know when Mr. Wemyss telephoned, as she 
wished to speak to him. 

She was feeling more and more uneasy as time passed 
as to what Everard would think of her uninvited pres- 
ence in his house. It was natural; but would he think 
so? What wasn’t natural was for her to feel uneasy, 
seeing that the house was also Lucy’s, and that the 
child’s face had hardly had room enough on it for 
the width of her smile of welcome. There, however, 
it was,—Miss Entwhistle felt like an interloper. It 
was best to face things. She not only felt like an 
interloper but, in Everard’s eyes, she was an inter- 
loper. This was the situation: His wife had a cold— 
a bad cold, but not anything serious; nobody had 
sent for his wife’s aunt; nobody had asked her to 
come; and here she was. If that, in Everard’s eyes, 
wasn’t being an interloper Miss Entwhistle was sure 
he wouldn’t know one if he saw one. 

In her life she had read many books, and was familiar 

259 


260 VERA 


with those elderly relatives frequently to be met in 
them, and usually female, who intrude into a newly 
married ménage and make themselves objectionable to 
one of the parties by sympathising with the other one. 
There was no cause for sympathy here, and if there 
ever should be Miss Entwhistle would certainly never 
sympathise except from a neutral place. She wouldn’t 
come into a man’s house, and in the very act of being 
nourished by his food sympathise with his wife; she 
would sympathise from London. Her honesty of in- 
tention, her single-mindedness, were, she knew, com- 
plete. She didn’t feel, she knew she wasn’t, in the 
least like these relatives in books, and yet as she sat 
in Everard’s chair—obviously it was his; the uphol- 
stered seat was his very shape, inverted—she was 
afraid, indeed she was certain, he would think she was 
one of them. 

There she was, she thought, come unasked, sitting 
in his place, eating his food. He usedn’t to like her; 
would he like her any the better for this? From a 
desire not to have meals of his she had avoided tea, 
but she hadn’t been able to avoid dinner, and with each 
dish set before her—dishes produced surprisingly, as 
she couldn’t but observe, at the end of an arm thrust 
to the minute through a door—she felt more and more 
acutely that she was in his eyes, if he could only see her, 
an interloper. No doubt it was Lucy’s house too, but 
it didn’t feel as if it were, and she would have given 
much to be able to escape back to London that night. 

But whatever Everard thought of her intrusion she 


VERA 261 


wasn’t going to leave Lucy. Not alone in that house; 
not to wake up to find herself alone in that house. 
Besides, who knew how such a chill would develop? 
There ought of course to have been a doctor. When 
Everard rang up, as he would be sure to the last thing 
to ask how Lucy was, she would go to the telephone, 
announce her presence, and inquire whether it wouldn’t 
be as well to have a doctor round in the morning. 

Therefore she asked Chesterton to let her know when 
Mr. Wemyss telephoned; and Chesterton, surprised, 
for it was not Wemyss’s habit to telephone to The 
Willows, all his communications coming on postcards, 
paused just an instant before replying, “If you please, 
ma’am.”’ 

Chesterton wondered what Wemyss was expected to 
telephone about. It wouldn’t have occurred to her 
that it might be about the new Mrs. Wemyss’s health, 
because he had not within her recollection ever tele- 
phoned about the health of a Mrs. Wemyss. Sometimes 
the previous Mrs. Wemyss’s health gave way enough 
for her to stay in bed, but no telephoning from London 
had in consequence taken place. Accordingly she won- 
dered what message could be expected. 

“What time would Mr. Wemyss be likely to ring 
up?” asked Miss Entwhistle presently, more for the sake 
of saying something than from a desire to know. She 
was going to that telephone, but she didn’t want to, 
she was in no hurry for it, it wasn’t impatience to meet 
Wemyss’s voice making her talk to Chesterton; what 
was making her talk was the dining-room. 


262 VERA 


For not only did its bareness afflict her, and its 
glaring light, and its long empty table, and the way 
Chesterton’s footsteps echoed up and down the un- 
carpeted floor, but there on the wall was that poor 
thing looking at her,—she had no doubt whatever as to 
who it was standing up in that long slim frock looking 
at her, and she was taken aback. In spite of her deter- 
mination to like all the arrangements, it did seem to her 
tactless to have her there, especially as she had that 
trick of looking so very steadily at one; and when 
she turned her eyes away from the queer, suppressed 
smile, she didn’t like what she saw on the other wall 
either,—that enlarged old man, that obvious progenitor, 

Having caught sight of both these pictures, which at 
night were much more conspicuous than by day, owing 
to the brilliant unshaded lighting, Miss Entwhistle 
had no wish to look at them again, and carefully looked 
either at her plate or at Chesterton’s back as she hur- 
ried down the room to the dish being held out at the 
end of the remarkable arm; but being nevertheless much 
disturbed by their presence, and by the way she knew 
they weren’t taking their eyes off her however carefully 
she took hers off them, she asked Chesterton what time 
Wemyss would be likely to telephone merely in order 
to hear the sound of a human voice. 

Chesterton then informed her that her master never 
did telephone to The Willows, so that she was unable 
to say what time he would. 

“But,” said Miss Entwhistle, surprised, “‘you have a 
telephone.” 


VERA 263 


“If you please, ma’am,” said Chesterton. 

Miss Entwhistle didn’t lke to ask what, then, the 
telephone was for, because she didn’t wish to embark 
on anything even remotely approaching a discussion of 
Everard’s habits, so she wondered in silence. 

Chesterton, however, presently elucidated. She 
coughed a little first, conscious that to volunteer a 
remark wasn’t quite within her idea of the perfect 
parlourmaid, and then she said, “It’s owing to local 
convenience, ma’am. We find it indispensable in the 
isolated situation of the ’ouse. We give our orders 
to the tradesmen by means of the telephone. Mr. 
Wemyss installed it for that purpose, he says, and 
objects to trunk calls because of the charges and the 
waste of Mr. Wemyss’s time at the other end, ma’am.” 

“Oh,”? said Miss Entwhistle. 

“Tf you please, ma’am,” said Chesterton. 

Miss Entwhistle said nothing more. With her eyes 
fixed on her plate in order to avoid those other eyes, 
she wondered what she had better do. It was half- 
past eight, and Everard hadn’t rung up. If he were 
going to be anxious enough not to mind the trunk- 
call charge he would have been anxious enough before 
this. That he hadn’t rung up showed he regarded 
Lucy’s indisposition as slight. What, then, would he 
say to her uninvited presence there? Nothing, she was 
afraid, that would be really hospitable. And she had 
just eaten a pudding of his. It seemed to curdle up 
within her. 

“No, no coffee, thank you,” she said hastily, on 


264 VERA 


Chesterton’s inquiring if she wished it served in the 
library. She had had dinner because she couldn’t help 
herself, urged to it by the servants, but she needn’t 
proceed to extras. And the library,—wasn’t it in the 
library that Everard was sitting the day that poor 
smiling thing . .. yes, she remembered Lucy telling 
her so. No, she would not have coffee in the library. 

But now about telephoning. Really the only thing 
to do, the only way of dignity, was to ring him up. 
Useless waiting any more for him to do it; evidently 
he wasn’t going to. She would ring him up, tell him she 
was there, and ask—she clung particularly to the doc- 
tor idea, because his presence would justify hers—if 
the doctor hadn’t better look in in the morning. 

Thus it was that, sitting quiet in their basement, 
the Twites were startled about nine o’clock that 
evening by the telephone bell. It sounded more un- 
canny than ever up there, making all that noise by 
itself in the dark; and when, hurrying up anxiously 
to it, Twite applied his ear, all that happened was 
that an extremely short-tempered voice told him to 
hold on. 

Twite held on, listening hard and hearing nothing. 

“Say ’Ullo, Twite,” presently advised Mrs. Twite 
from out of the anxious silence at the foot of the kitchen 
stairs. 

“°*Ullo,” said Twite half-heartedly. 

“Must be a wrong number,” said Mrs. Twite, after 
more silence. “ ’Ang it up, and come and finish your 
supper.” 


VERA 265 


A very small voice said something very far away. 
Twite strained every nerve to hear. He hadn’t yet had 
to face a trunk call, and he thought the telephone was 
fainting. 

* *Ullo?”’ he said anxiously, trying to make the word 
sound polite, 

“It’s a wrong number,” said Mrs. Twite, after fur- 
ther waiting. “’Ang it up.” 

The voice, incredibly small, began to talk again, and 
Twite, unable to hear a word, kept on saying with 
increasing efforts to sound polite, *’Ullo? °’Ullo?” 

*“°Ang it up,” said Mrs, Twite, who from the bottom 
of the stairs was always brave. 

“That’s what it is,’? said Twite at last, exhausted. 
“It’s a wrong number.” And he went to the writing- 
pad and wrote: 


A wrong number rang up sir believed to be a lady 9.10. 


So Miss Entwhistle at the other end was defeated, 
and having done her best and not succeeded she decided 
to remain quiescent, at any rate till the morning. 
Quiescent and uncritical. She wouldn’t worry; she 
wouldn’t criticise; she would merely think of Everard 
in those terms of amiability which were natural to her. 

But while she was waiting for the call in the cold 
hall there had been a moment when her fixed benevolence 
did a little loosen. Chesterton, seeing that she shivered, 
had suggested the library for waiting in, where she said 
there was a fire, but Miss Entwhistle preferred to be 
cold in the hall than warm in the library; and standing 


266 VERA 


in that bleak place she saw a line of firelight beneath a 
door, which she then knew must be the library. Ac- 
cordingly she then also knew that Lucy’s bedroom was 
exactly above the library, for looking up she could see 
its door from where she stood; so that it was out of 
that window. . . . Her benevolence for a moment did 
become unsteady. He let the child sleep there, he 
made the child sleep there. .. . 

She soon, however, had herself in hand again. Lucy 
didn’t mind, so why should she? Lucy was asleep there 
at that moment, with a look of complete content on her 
face. But there was one thing Miss Entwhistle de- 
cided she would do: Lucy shouldn’t wake up by any 
chance in the night and find herself in that room alone, 
—window or no window, she would sleep there with 
her. 

This was a really heroic decision, and only love for 
Lucy made it possible. Apart from the window and 
what she believed had happened at it, apart from the 
way that poor thing’s face in the photograph haunted 
her, there was the feeling that it wasn’t Lucy’s bedroom 
at all but Everard’s. It was oddly disagreeable to Miss 
Entwhistle to spend the night, for instance, with 
Wemyss’s sponge. She debated in the spare-room when 
she was getting ready for bed—a small room on the 
other side of the house, with a nice high window-sill 
—whether she wouldn’t keep her clothes on. At 
least then she would feel more strange, at least she 
would feel less at home. But how tiring. At her age, 
if she sat up all night—and in her clothes no lying down 


VERA 267 


could be comfortable—she would be the merest rag next 
morning, and quite unable to cope on the telephone with 
Everard. And she really must take out her hairpins; 
she couldn’t sleep a wink with them all pressing on her 
head. Yet the familiarity of being in that room among 
the neckties without her hairpins. . . . She hesitated, 
and argued, and all the while she was slowly taking out 
her hairpins and taking off her clothes, 

At the last moment, when she was in her nightgown 
and her hair was neatly plaited and she was looking the 
goodest of tidy little women, her courage failed her. 
No, she couldn’t go. She would stay where she was, 
and ring and ask that nice housemaid to sleep with Mrs. 
Wemyss in case she wanted anything in the night. 

She did ring; but by the time Lizzie came Miss 
Entwhistle, doubting the sincerity of her motives, had 
been examining them. Was it really the neckties? 
Was it really the sponge? Wasn’t it, at bottom, really 
the window? 

She was ashamed. Where Lucy could sleep she could 
sleep. “I rang,” she said, “to ask you to be so kind 
as to help me carry my pillow and blankets into Mrs. 
Wemyss’s room. I’m going to sleep on the sofa there.” 

“Yes ma’am,” said Lizzie, picking them up. “The 
sofa’s very short and ’ard, ma’am. ’Adn’t you better 
sleep in the bed?” : 

“No,’? said Miss Entwhistle. 

“There’s plenty of room, ma’am. Mrs. Wemyss 
wouldn’t know you was in it, it’s such a large bed.” 

“T will sleep on the sofa,” said Miss Entwhistle. 


XXVITT 


except that he was kept longer than he liked 
at his office by the accumulation of business and 
by having a prolonged difference of opinion, ending 
in dismissal, with a typist who had got out of hand 
during his absence to the extent of answering him back. 


|: London Wemyss went through his usual day, 


It was five before he was able to leave—and even 
then he hadn’t half finished, but he declined to be sac- 
rificed further—and proceeded as usual to his club to 
play bridge. He had a great desire for bridge after 
not having played for so long, and it was difficult, 
doing exactly the things he had always done, for him 
to remember that he was married. In fact he wouldn’t 
have remembered if he hadn’t felt so indignant; but 
all day underneath everything he did, everything he 
said and thought, lay indignation, and so he knew he 
was married, 

Being extremely methodical he had long ago divided 
his life inside and out into compartments, each strictly 
separate, each, as it were, kept locked till the proper 
moment for its turn arrived, when he unlocked it and 
took out its contents,—work, bridge, dinner, wife, sleep, 
Paddington, The Willows, or whatever it was that it 
contained. Having finished with the contents, the 

268 


VERA 269 


compartment was locked up and dismissed from his 
thoughts till its turn came round again. A honeymoon 
was a great shake-up, but when it occurred he arranged 
the date of its cessation as precisely as the date of its 
inauguration. On such a day, at such an hour, it would 
come to an end, the compartments would once more be 
unlocked, and regularity resumed. Bridge was the 
one activity which, though it was taken out of its 
compartment at the proper time, didn’t go into it again 
with any sort of punctuality. Everything else, in- 
cluding his wife, was locked up to the minute; but bridge 
would stay out till any hour. On each of the days 
in London, the Mondays to Fridays, he proceeded 
punctually to his office, and from thence punctually 
to his club and bridge. He always lunched and dined 
at his club. Other men, he was aware, dined not in- 
frequently at home, but the explanation of that was 
that their wives weren’t Vera. 

The moment, then, that Wemyss found himself once 
more doing the usual things among the usual surround- 
ings, he felt so exactly as he used to that he wouldn’t 
have remembered Lucy at all if it hadn’t been for that 
layer of indignation at the bottom of his mind. Going 
up the steps of his club he was conscious of a sense of 
hard usage, and searching for its cause remembered 
Lucy. His wife now wasn’t Vera, and yet he was to 
dine at his club exactly as if she were. His wife was 
Lucy; who, instead of being where she ought to be, 
eagerly awaiting his return to Lancaster Gate—it was 
one of his legitimate grievances against Vera that she 


270 VERA 


didn’t eagerly await—she was having a cold at Strorley. 
And why was she having a cold at Strorley? And 
why was he, a newly-married man, deprived of the 
comfort of his wife and going to spend the evening 
exactly as he had spent all the evenings for months 
past? | 

Wemyss was very indignant, but he was also very 
desirous of bridge. If Lucy had been waiting for him 
he would have had to leave off bridge before his desire 
for it had been anything like sated,—whatever wives 
one had they shackled one,—and as it was he could 
play as long as he wanted to and yet at the same time 
remain justly indignant. Accordingly he wasn’t nearly 
as unhappy as he thought he was; not, at any rate, 
till the moment came for going solitary to bed. He 
detested sleeping by himself. Even Vera had always 
slept with him. 

Altogether Wemyss felt that he had had a bad day, 
what with the disappointment of its beginning, and the 
extra work at the office, and no decent lunch—*Posi- 
tively only time to snatch a bun and a glass of milk,” 
he announced, amazed, to the first acquaintance he met 
in the club. “Just fancy, only time to snatch »? but 
the acquaintance had melted away—and losing rather 
heavily at bridge, and going back to Lancaster Gate to 
find from the message left by Twite that that annoying 
aunt of Lucy’s had cropped up already. 

Usually Wemyss was amused by Twite’s messages, 
but nothing about this one amused him. He threw 
down the wrong number one impatiently,—Twite was 





VERA | Q71 


really a hopeless imbecile; he would dismiss him; but 
the other one he read again. ‘Wanted to know all 
about us, did she. Said it was very strange, did she. 
Like her impertinence,”’ he thought. She had lost no 
time in cropping up, he thought. Of how completely 
Miss Entwhistle had, in fact, cropped he was of course 
unaware, 

Yes, he had had a bad day, and he was going to have 
a lonely night. He went upstairs feeling deeply hurt, 
and winding his watch. 

But after much solid sleep he felt better; and at 
breakfast he said to Twite, who always jumped when 
he addressed him, “Mrs. Wemyss will be coming up 
to-day.” 

Twite’s brain didn’t work very fast owing to the way 
it spent most of its time dormant in a basement, and 
for a moment he thought—it startled him—that his 
master had forgotten the lady was dead. Ought he to 
remind him? What a painful dilemma. ... How- 
ever, he remembered the new Mrs. Wemyss just in time 
not to remind him, and to say “Yes sir,” without too 
perceptible a pause. His mind hadn’t room in it to 
contain much, and it assimilated slowly that which it 
contained. He had only been in Wemyss’s service 
three months before the Mrs. Wemyss he found there 
died. He was just beginning to assimilate her when 
she ceased to be assimilatable, and to him and his wife 
in their quiet subterraneous existence it had seemed as 
if not more than a week had passed before there was 
another Mrs. Wemyss. Far was it from him to pass 


272 VERA 


opinions on the rapid marriages of gentlemen, but he 
couldn’t keep up with these Mrs. Wemysses. His mind, 
he found, hadn’t yet really realised the new one. He 
knew she was there somewhere, for he had seen her 
briefly on the Saturday morning, and he knew she 
would presently begin to disturb him by needing meals, 
but he easily forgot her. He forgot her now, and 
consequently for a moment had the dreadful thought 
described above. 

“T shall be in to dinner,” said Wemyss. 

“Yes sir,’ said Twite. 

Dinner. There usedn’t to be dinner. His master 
hadn’t been in once to dinner since Twite knew him. 
A tray for the lady, while there was a lady; that was 
all. Mrs. Twite could just manage a tray. Since the 
lady had left off coming up to town owing to her 
accident, there hadn’t been anything. Only quiet. 

He stood waiting, not having been waved out of the 
room, and anxiously watching Wemyss’s face, for he 
was a nervous man, 

Then the telephone bell rang. 

Wemyss, without looking up, waved him out to it 
and went on with his breakfast; and after a minute, 
noticing that he neither came back nor could be heard 
saying anything beyond a faint, propitiatory “ ’Ullo,” 
called out to him. 

“What is it??? Wemyss called out. 

“T can’t hear, sir,” Twite’s distressed voice answered 
from the hall. 


VERA 273 


“Fool,” said Wemyss, appearing, table-napkin in 
hand. 

“Yes sir,’’ said Twite. 

He took the receiver from him, and then the Twites 
—Mrs. Twite from the foot of the kitchen stairs and 
Twite lingering in the background because he hadn’t 
yet been waved away—heard the following: 

““Yes—yes. Yes, speaking. Hullo. Who is it?” 

“What? I can’t hear. What?” 

“Miss who? Ent—oh, good-morning, How distant 
your voice sounds.” 

“What? Where? Where?” 

“Oh really.” 

Here the person at the other end talked a great deal. 

“Yes. Quite. But then you see she wasn’t.” 

More prolonged talk from the other end. 

“What? She isn’t coming up? Indeed she is. She’s 


39 





expected. Tve ordered 
“What? I can’t hear. The doctor? You’re send- 
ing for the doctor?”’ 
“I daresay. But then you see I consider it isn’t.” 


“TI daresay, I daresay. No, of course I can’t. How 
99 





can I leave my work 

“Oh, very well, very well. I daresay. No doubt. 
She’s to come up for all that as arranged, tell her, and . 
if she needs doctors there are more of them here anyhow 
than—what? Can’t possibly?” 


“I suppose you know you're taking a great deal upon 
39 





yourself unasked 
“What? What?” 


274 . VERA 


A very rapid clear voice cut in. “Do you want an- 
other three minutes?” it asked. 

He hung up the receiver with violence. “Oh, damn 
the woman, damn the woman,” he said, so loud that the 
Twites shook like reeds to hear him. 

At the other end Miss Entwhistle was walking away 
lost in thought. Her position was thoroughly un- 
pleasant. She disliked extraordinarily that she should 
at that moment contain an egg and some coffee which 
had once been Wemyss’s. She would have breakfasted 
on a cup of tea only, if it hadn’t been that Lucy was 
going to need looking after that day, and the looker- 
after must be nourished. As she went upstairs again, 
a faint red spot on each cheek, she couldn’t help 
being afraid that she and Everard would have to 
exercise patience before they got to be fond of each 
other. On the telephone he hardly did himself justice, 
she thought. 

Lucy hadn’t had a good night. She woke up suddenly 
from what was apparently a frightening dream soon 
after Miss Entwhistle had composed herself on the 
sofa, and had been very restless and hot for a long 
time. There seemed to be a great many things about 
the room that she didn’t like. One of them was the 
bed. Probably the poor little thing was bemused by 
her dream and her feverishness, but she said several 
things about the bed which showed that it was on 
her mind. Miss Entwhistle had warmed some milk 
on a spirit-lamp provided by Lizzie, and had given 
it to her and soothed her and petted her. She didn’t 


VERA 275 


mention the window, for which Miss Entwhistle was 
thankful; but when first she woke up from her fright- 
ening dream and her aunt hurried across to her, she had 
stared at her and actually called her Everard—her, 
in her meek plaits. When this happened Miss Ent- 
whistle made up her mind that the doctor should be 
sent for the first thing in the morning. About six 
she tumbled into an uncomfortable sleep again, and 
Miss Entwhistle crept out of the room and dressed. 
Certainly she was going to have a doctor round, and 
hear what he had to say; and as soon as she was 
strengthened by breakfast she would do her duty and 
telephone to Everard. 

This she did, with the result that she returned to 
Lucy’s room with a little red spot on each cheek; and 
when she looked at Lucy, still uneasily sleeping and 
breathing as though her chest were all sore, the idea 
that she was to get up and travel to London made the 
red spots on Miss Entwhistle’s cheeks burn brighter. 
She calmed down, however, on remembering that 
Everard couldn’t see how evidently poorly the child 
was, and told herself that if he could he would be all 
tenderness. She told herself this, but she didn’t believe 
it; and then she was vexed that she didn’t believe it. 
Lucy loved him. Lucy had looked perfectly pleased 
and content yesterday before she became so ill. One 
mustn’t judge a man by his way with a telephone. 
~ At ten o’clock the doctor came. He had been in 
Strorley for years, and was its only doctor. He was 
one of those guests who used to dine at The Willows 


276 VERA 


in the early days of Wemyss’s possession of it. Occa- 
sionally he had attended the late Mrs. Wemyss; and 
the last. time he had been in the house was when he was 
sent for suddenly on the day of her death. He, in 
common with the rest of Strorley, had heard of 
Wemyss’s second marriage, and he shared the general 
shocked surprise. Strorley, which looked such an un- 
conscious place, such a torpid, unconscious riverside 
place, was nevertheless intensely sensitive to shocks, 
and it hadn’t at all recovered from the shock of that 
poor Mrs. Wemyss’s death and the very ‘dreadful 
inquest, when the fresh shock of another Mrs. Wemyss 
arriving on the scene made it, as it were, reel anew, and 
made it reel worse. Marriage so quickly on the heels 
of that terrible death? The Wemysses were only week- 
enders and summer holiday people, so that it wasn’t 
quite so scandalous to have them in Strorley as it 
would have been if they were unintermittent residents, 
yet it was serious enough. That inquest had been in 
all the newspapers. To have a house in one’s midst 
which produced doubtful coroner’s verdicts was a blot 
on any place, and the new Mrs, Wemyss couldn’t possi- 
bly be anything but thoroughly undesirable. Of course 
no one would call on her. Impossible. And when the 
doctor was rung up and asked to come round, he didn’t 
tell his wife where he was going, because he didn’t wish 
for trouble. 

Chesterton—how well he ‘remembered Chesterton; 
but after all, it was only the other day that he was there 
last—ushered him into the library, and he was standing 


VERA Q77 


gloomily in front of the empty grate, looking neither to 
the right nor to the left for he disliked the memories 
connected with the flags outside the window, and wishing 
he had a partner because then he would have sent him 
instead, when a spare little lady, bland and pleasant, 
came in and said she was the patient’s aunt. An edu- 
cated little lady; not at all the sort of relative he would 
have expected the new Mrs. Wemyss to have. 

There was a general conviction in Strorley that 
the new Mrs. Wemyss must have been a barmaid, a 
typist, or a nursery governess,—was, that is, either 
very bold, very poor, or very meek. Else how could she 
have married Wemyss? And this conviction had 
reached and infected even the doctor, who was a busy 
man off whom gossip usually slid. When, however, 
he saw Miss Entwhistle he at once was sure that 
there was nothing in it. This wasn’t the aunt of either 
the bold, the poor, or the meek; this was just a decent 
gentlewoman. He shook hands with her, really pleased 
to see her. Everybody was always pleased to see Miss 
Entwhistle, except Wemyss. 

“Nothing serious, I hope?” asked the doctor. 

Miss Entwhistle said she didn’t think there was, 
but that her nephew 

“You mean Mr. Wemyss?” 

She bowed her head. She did mean Mr. Wemyss. 
Her nephew. Her nephew, that is, by marriage. 

“Quite,” said the doctor. 

Her nephew naturally wanted his wife to go up and 
join him in London. 





278 VERA 


“Naturally,” said the doctor. 

And she wanted to know when she would be fit to go. 

“Then let us go upstairs and I'll tell you,” said the 
doctor. 

This was a very pleasant little lady, he thought as 
he followed her up the well-known stairs, to have be- 
come related to Wemyss immediately on the top of 
all that affair. Now he would have said himself that 
after such a ghastly thing as that most women 

But here they arrived in the bedroom and his sen- 
tence remained unfinished, because on seeing the small 
head on the pillow of the treble bed he thought, “Why, 
he’s married a child, What an extraordinary thing.” 

“How old is she?” he asked Miss Entwhistle, for 
Lucy was still uneasily sleeping; and when she told 
him he was surprised. 

“It’s because she’s out of proportion to the bed,” 
explained Miss Entwhistle in a whisper. ‘“‘She doesn’t 
usually look so inconspicuous.” | 

The whispering and being looked at woke Lucy, 
and the doctor sat down beside her and got to business. 
The result was what Miss Entwhistle expected: she 
had a very violent feverish cold, which might turn into 
anything if she were not kept in bed. If she were, 
and with proper looking after, she would be all right 
in a few days. He laughed at the idea of London. 

“How did you come to get such a violent chill?” 
he asked Lucy. 

“T don’t—know,” she answered. 


“Well, don’t talk,” he said, laying her hand down 





VERA 29 


on the quilt—he had been holding it while his sharp 
eyes watched her—and giving it a brief pat of farewell. 
“Just lie there and get better. Ill send something for 
your throat, and I'll look in again to-morrow.” 

Miss Entwhistle went downstairs with him feeling 
as if she had buckled him on as a shield, and would be 
able, clad in such armour, to face anything Everard 
might say. 

“She likes that room?” he asked abruptly, pausing 
a moment in the hall. 

“JT can’t quite make out,’? said Miss Entwhistle. 
“We haven’t had any talk at all yet. It was from that 


ied 





window, wasn’t it, that 

“No. The one above.” 

“The one above? Oh really.” 

“Yes. There’s a sitting-room. But I was thinking 
whether being in the same bed—well, good-bye. Cheer 
her up. She'll want it when she’s better. She'll feel 
weak, I'll be round to-morrow.” 

He went out pulling on his gloves, followed to the 
steps by Miss Entwhistle. 

On the steps he paused again. ‘How does she like 
being here?”’ he asked. 

“T don’t know,” said Miss Entwhistle. ‘We haven’t 
talked at all yet.” 

She looked at him a moment, and then added, “‘She’s 
very much in love.” 

“Ah. Yes. Really. I see. Well, good-bye.” 

He turned to go. 


280 VERA 


“It’s wonderful, wonderful,” he said, pausing once 
more, 

“What is wonderful?” 

“What love will do.” 

“It is indeed,” agreed Miss Entwhistle, thinking of 
all it had done to Lucy. 

He seemed as if he were going to say something more, 
but thought better of it and climbed into his dogcart 
and was driven away. 


X XIX 


[T= days went by undisturbed by the least 
manifestation from Wemyss. Miss Ent- 
whistle wrote to him on each of the after- 
noons, telling him of Lucy’s progress and of what 
the doctor said about her, and on each of the evenings 
she lay down on the sofa to sleep feeling excessively 
insecure, for how very likely that he would come down 
by some late train and walk in, and then there she 
would be. In spite of that, she would have been very 
glad if he had walked in,—it would have seemed more 
natural; and she couldn’t help wondering whether 
the little thing in the bed wasn’t thinking so too. But 
nothing happened. He didn’t come, he didn’t write, he 
made no sign of any sort. “Curious,” said Miss Ent- 
whistle to herself; and forebore to criticise further. 

They were peaceful days. Lucy was getting better 
all the time, though still kept carefully in bed by the 
doctor, and Miss Entwhistle felt as much justified in 
being in the house as Chesterton or Lizzie, for she was 
performing duties under a doctor’s directions. Also 
the weather was quiet and sunshiny. In fact, there 
was peace. 

On Thursday the doctor said Lucy might get up for 
a few hours and sit on the sofa; and there, its asperities 

281 


282 VERA 


softened by pillows, she sat and had tea, and through 
the open window came the sweet smells of April. The 
gardener was mowing the lawn, and one of the smells 
was of the cut grass; Miss Entwhistle had been out 
for a walk, and found some windflowers and some 
lovely bright green moss, and put them in a bowl; 
the doctor had brought a little bunch of violets out 
of his garden; the afternoon sun lay beautifully on 
the hills across the river; the river slid past the end 
of the garden tranquilly ; and Miss Entwhistle, pouring 
out Lucy’s tea and buttering her toast, felt that she 
could at that moment very nearly have been happy, 
in spite of its being The Willows she was«in, if there 
hadn’t, in the background, brooding over her day and 
night, been that very odd and disquieting silence of 
Everard’s. ? 

As if Lucy knew what she was thinking, she said 
—it was the first time she had talked of him—*You 
know, Aunt Dot, Everard will have been fearfully 
busy this week, because of having been away so long.” 

“Oh of course,” agreed Miss Entwhistle with much 
heartiness. ‘I’m sure the poor dear has been run off 
his legs.” 

“He didn’t—he hasn’t 

Lucy flushed and broke off. 

“TI suppose,” she began again after a minute, “there? s 
been nothing from him? No message, I mean? On 
the telephone or anything?” 

*“No, I don’t think there has—not since our talk the 
first day,” said Miss Entwhistle. 





VERA 283 
“Oh? Did he telephone the first day?” asked Lucy 


quickly. ‘You never told me.” 

“You were asleep nearly all that day. Yes,” said 
Miss Entwhistle, clearing her throat, “we had a—we 
had quite a little talk.” 

“What did he say?” 

“Well, he naturally wanted you to be well enough 
to go up to London, and of course he was very sorry 
you couldn’t.” 

Lucy looked suddenly much happier. 

“Yes,” said Miss Entwhistle, as though in answer 
to the look. 

“He hates writing letters, you know, Aunt Dot,” 
Lucy said presently. 7 

“Men do,” said Miss Entwhistle. ‘‘It’s very curious,” 
she continued brightly, “but men do.” 

“And he hates telephoning. It was wonderful for 
him to have telephoned that day.” 

“Men,” said Miss Entwhistle, ‘fare very funny about 
some things.” - 

“To-day is Thursday, isn’t it,” said Lucy. “He 
ought to be here by one o’clock to-morrow.” 

Miss Entwhistle started. “To-morrow?” she re- 
peated. “Really? Does he? I mean, ought he? Some- 
how I had supposed Saturday. The week-end somehow 
suggests Saturdays to me.” 

“No. He—we,” Lucy corrected herself, “‘“come down 
on Fridays. He’s sure to be down in time for lunch.” 

“Oh is he?” said Miss Entwhistle, thinking a great 
many things very quickly. “Well, if it is his habit,” 


7 


284 VERA 


she went on. “I am sure too that he will. Do you 
remember how we set our clocks by him when he came 
to tea in Eaton Terrace?” 

Lucy smiled, and the remembrance of those days 
of love, and of all his dear, funny ways, flooded her 
heart and washed out for a moment the honeymoon, 
the birthday, everything that had happened since. 

Miss Entwhistle couldn’t but notice the unmistak- 
able love-look. “Oh I’m so glad you love each other. 
so much,” she said with all her heart. ‘You know, 
Lucy, I was afraid that perhaps this house——” 

She stopped, because adequately to discuss The 
Willows in all its aspects needed, she felt, perfect health 
on both sides. 

“Yes, I don’t think a house matters when peopie 
love each other,” said Lucy. 

“Not a bit. Not a bit,’ agreed Miss Entwhistle. 
Not even, she thought robustly, when it was a house 
with a recent dreadful history. Love—she hadn’t her- 
self experienced it, but what was an imagination for 
except to imagine with?—love was so strong an armour 
that nothing could reach one and hurt one through it. 
That was why lovers were so selfish. They sat together 
inside their armour perfectly safe, entirely untouchable, 
completely uninterested in what happened to the rest of 
the world. ‘‘Besides,” she went on aloud, “you’ll alter 
Th 

Lucy’s smile at that was a little sickly. Aunt Dot’s 
optimism seemed to her extravagant. She was unable 
to see herself altering The Willows. 


VERA 285 


‘You'll have all your father’s furniture and books 
to put about,” said Aunt Dot, continuing in optimism. 
“Why, you'll be able to make the place really quite— 


99 





quite 

She was going to say habitable, but ate another 
piece of toast instead, 

“Yes, I expect I’ll have the books here, anyhow,” 
said Lucy. ‘“There’s a sitting-room upstairs with 
room in it.” 

“Ts there?” said Miss Entwhistle, suddenly very 
attentive. 

“Lots of room. It’s to be my sitting-room, and the 
books could go there. Except that—execept that 4 

“Except what?” asked Miss Entwhistle. 

“T don’t know. I don’t much want to alter that 
room. It was Vera’s.” 

“YT should alter it beyond recognition,” said Miss 
Entwhistle firmly. 

Lucy was silent. She felt too flabby, after her three 
days with a temperature, to engage in discussion with 





anybody firm. | 

“That’s to say,” said Miss Entwhistle, “if you like 
having the room at all. I should have thought a 

“Oh yes, I like having the room,” said Lucy flush- 
ing. 

Then it was Miss Entwhistle who was silent; and 
she was silent because she didn’t believe Lucy really 
could like having the actual room from which that 
unfortunate Vera met her death. It wasn’t natural. 


The child couldn’t mean it. She needed feeding up. 





286 VERA 


Perhaps they had better not talk about rooms; not 
till Lucy was stronger. Perhaps they had better not 
talk at all, because everything they said was bound in 
the circumstances to lead either to Everard or Vera. 

““Wouldn’t you like me to read aloud to you a little 
while before you go back to bed?” she asked, when 
Lizzie came in to clear away the tea-things. 

Lucy thought this a very good idea. “Oh do, Aunt 
Dot,” she said; for she too was afraid of what talking 
might lead to, Aunt Dot was phenomenally quick. 
Lucy felt she couldn’t bear it, she simply couldn’t bear 
it, if Aunt Dot were to think that perhaps Everard 
. « . So she said quite eagerly, “Oh do, Aunt Dot,” 
and not until she had said it did she remember that the 
books were locked up, and the key was on Everard’s 
watch-chain. Then she sat looking up at Aunt Dot 
with a startled, conscience-stricken face. 

“What is it, Lucy?” asked Miss Entwhistle, wonder- 
ing why she had turned red. 

Just in time Lucy remembered that there were Vera’s 
books. ‘Do you mind very much going up to the 
sitting-room?” she asked. ‘‘Vera’s books iA 

Miss Entwhistle did mind very much going up to 
the sitting-room, and saw no reason why Vera’s books 
should be chosen. Why should she have to read Vera’s 
books? Why did Lucy want just those, and look so 
odd and guilty about it? Certainly the child needed 
feeding up. It wasn’t natural, it was unwholesome, 
this queer attraction she appeared to feel towards Vera. 

She didn’t say anything of this, but remarked that 





VERA 287 


there was a room called the library in the house which 
suggested books, and hadn’t she better choose some- 
thing from out of that,—go down, instead of go up. 
Lucy, painfully flushed, looked at her. Nothing 
would induce her to tell her about the key. Aunt Dot 
would think it so—ridiculous. 
“Yes, but Everard -’ she stammered. ‘*They’re 


rather special books—he doesn’t like them taken out 
393 








of the room i 

“Oh,” said Miss Entwhistle, trying hard to avoid 
any opinion of any sort. 

“But I don’t see why you should go up all those 
stairs, Aunt Dot darling,” Lucy went on. “Lizzie will, 
won’t you, Lizzie? Bring down some of the books— 
any of them. An armful.” 

Lizzie, thus given carte blanche, brought down the 
six first books from the top shelf, and set them on the 
table beside Lucy. 

Lucy recognised the cover of one of them at once,— 
it was Wuthering Heights. 

Miss Entwhistle took it up, read its title in silence, 
and put it down again. 

The next one was Emily Bronté’s collected poems. 

Miss Entwhistle took it up, read its title in silence, 
and put it down again. 

The third one was Thomas Hardy’s Time’s Laugh- 
ing-Stocks. 

Miss Entwhistle took it up, read its title in silence, 
and put it down again. 

The other three were Baedekers. 


288 VERA 


“Well, I don’t think there’s anything I want to read 
here,” she said. 

Lizzie asked if she should take them away then, and 
bring some more; and presently she reappeared with 
another armful. 

These were all Baedekers. 

“Curious,” said Miss Entwhistle. 

Then Lucy remembered that she, too, beneath her 
distress on Saturday when she pulled out one after the 
other of Vera’s books in her haste to understand her, 
to get comfort, to get, almost she hoped, counsel, had 
felt surprised at the number of Baedekers. The greater 
proportion of the books in Vera’s shelves were guide- 
books and time-tables. But there had been other 
things,—“If you were to bring some out of a different 
part of the bookcase,” she suggested to Lizzie; who 
thereupon removed the Baedekers, and presently reap- 
peared with more books, 

This time they were miscellaneous, and Mics Ent- 
whistle turned them over with a kind of reverential 
reluctance. That poor thing; this day last year she 
was probably reading them herself. It seemed sacrilege 
for two strangers. . . . Merciful that one couldn’t see 
into the future. What would the poor creature have 
thought of the picture presented at that moment,— 
the figure in the blue dressing-gown, sitting in the mid- 
dle of all the things that had been hers such a very 
little while before? Well, perhaps she would have been 
glad they weren’t hers any longer, glad that she had 
finished, was done with them. These books suggested 


VERA 289 


such tiredness, such a—yes, such a wish for escape. 

. . There was more Hardy,—all the poems this time 
in one volume. There was Pater—The Child im the 
House and Emerald Uthwart—Miss Entwhistle, fa- 
miliar with these, shook her head: that peculiar dwelling 
on death in them, that queer, fascinated inability to 
get away from it, that beautiful but sick wistfulness— 
no, she certainly wouldn’t read these. There was a 
book called In the Strange South Seas; and another 
about some island in the Pacific; and another about 
life in the desert; and one or two others, more of the 
flamboyant guide-book order, describing remote, 
glowing places. ... 

Suddenly Miss Entwhistle felt uncomfortable. She 
put down the book she was holding, and folded her 
hands in her lap and gazed out of the window at the 
hills on the other side of the river. She felt as if she 
had been prying, and prying unpardonably. The 
books people read,—was there ever anything more re- 
vealing? No, she refused to examine Vera’s books 
further. And apart from that horrible feeling of 
prying upon somebody defenceless, upon somebody 
pitiful, she didn’t wish to allow the thought these 
_ books suggested to get any sort of hold on her mind. 
It was essential, absolutely essential, that it shouldn’t. 
And if Lucy ever 

She got up and went ts the window. Lucy’s eyes 
followed her, puzzled. The gardener was still mowing 
the lawn, working very hard at it as though he were 
working against time. She watched his back, bent with 





290 VERA 


hurry as he and the boy laboriously pushed and pulled 
the machine up and down; and then she caught sight 
of the terrace just below, and the flags. | 

This was a dreadful house. Whichever way one 
looked one was entangled in a reminder. She turned 
away quickly, and there was that little loved thing in 
her blue wrapper, propped up on Vera’s pillows, watch- 
ing her with puzzled anxiety. Nothing could harm that 
child, she was safe, so long as she loved and believed 
in Everard; but suppose some day—suppose gradually 
—suppose a doubt should creep into her mind whether 
perhaps, after all, Vera’s fall . . . suppose a question 
should get into her head whether perhaps, after all, 
Vera’s death P 

Aunt Dot knew Lucy’s face so well that it seemed 
absurd to examine it now, searching for signs in its 
features and expression of enough character, enough 
nerves, enough—this, if there were enough of it, might 
by itself carry her through—sense of humour. Yes, she 
had a beautiful sweep of forehead; all that part of her 
face was lovely—so calm and open, with intelligent, 
sweet eyes. But were those dear eyes intelligent 
enough? Was not sweetness really far more manifest 
in them than intelligence? After that her face went 
small, and then, looking bigger than it was because of 
her little face, was her kind, funny mouth. Generous; 
easily forgiving; quick to be happy; quick to despair, 
—Aunt Dot, looking anxiously at it, thought she saw 
all this in the shape of Lucy’s mouth. But had the 
child strength? Had she the strength that would be 





VERA 291 


needed’ equally—supposing that doubt and that ques- 
tion should ever get into her head—for staying or for 
going; for staying or for running ... oh, but run- 
ning, running, for her very life... . 

With a violent effort Miss Entwhistle shook herself 
free from these thoughts. Where in heaven’s name 
was her mind wandering to? It was intolerable, this 
tyranny of suggestion in everything one looked at here, 
in everything one touched. And Lucy, who was watch- 
ing her and who couldn’t imagine why Aunt Dot should 
be so steadfastly gazing at her mouth, naturally asked, 
“Ts anything the matter with my face?” 

Then Miss Entwhistle managed to smile, and came 
and sat down again beside the sofa, “No,” she said, 
taking her hand. “But I don’t think I want to read 
after all. Let us talk.” 

And holding Lucy’s hand, who looked a little afraid 
at first but soon grew content on finding what the talk 
was to be about, she proceeded to discuss supper, and 
whether a poached egg or a cup of beef-tea contained 
the greater amount of nourishment. 


XXX 


caution, for she was sure Lucy wouldn’t like it, 

that as Everard was coming down next day she 
thought it better to go back to Eaton Terrace in the 
morning. 

“You two love-birds won’t want me,” she said gaily, 
expecting and prepared for opposition; but really, as 
the child was getting well so quickly, there was no 
reason why she and Everard should be forced to begin 
practismg affection for each other here and now. 
Besides, in the small bag she brought there had only 
been a nightgown and her washing things, and she 
couldn’t go on much longer on only that. 

To her surprise Lucy not only agreed but looked 
relieved, Miss Entwhistle was greatly surprised, and 
also greatly pleased. “She adores him,” she thought, 
“and only wants to be alone with him. If Everard 
makes her as happy as all that, who cares what he is 
like to me or to anybody else in the world?” 

And all the horrible, ridiculous things she had been 
thinking half an hour before were blown away like so 
many cobwebs. 

Just before half-past seven, while she was in her 
room on the other side of the house tidying herself 

292 


\ LSO she presently told her, approaching it with 


VERA 293 


before facing Chesterton and the evening meal—she 
had reduced it to the merest skeleton of a meal, but 
Chesterton insisted on waiting, and all the usual cere- 
monies were observed—she was startled by the sound 
of wheels on the gravel beneath the window. It could 
only be Everard. He had come. 

‘Dear me,”’ said Miss Entwhistle to herself,—and she 
who had planned to be gone so neatly before his ar- 
rival! 

It would be idle to pretend that she wasn’t very much 
perturbed,—she was; and the brush with which she was 
tidying her pretty grey hair shook in her hand. Dinner 
alone with Everard,—well, at least let her be thankful 
that he hadn’t arrived a few minutes later and found 
her actually sitting in his chair. What would have 
happened if he had? Miss Entwhistle, for all her 
dismay, couldn’t help laughing. Also, she encouraged 
herself for the encounter by remembering the doctor. 
Behind his authority she was secure. She had de- 
veloped, since Tuesday, from an uninvited visitor into 
an indispensable adjunct. Not a nurse; Lucy hadn’t 
at any moment been positively ill enough for a nurse; 
but an adjunct. 

She listened, her brush suspended. ‘There was no 
mistaking it: it was certainly Everard, for she heard 
his voice. The wheels ofthe cab, after the interval 
necessary for ejecting him, turned round again on the 
drive, crunching much less, and went away, and pres- 
ently there was his well-known deliberate, heavy tread 
coming up the uncarpeted staircase. Thank God for 


294 VERA 


bedrooms, thought Miss Entwhistle, fervently brushing. 
Where would one be without them and bathrooms,— 
places of legitimate lockings-in, places even the most 
indignant host was bound to respect? 

Now this wasn’t the proper spirit in which to go 
down and begin getting fond of Everard and giving 
him the opportunity of getting fond of her, as she 
herself presently saw. Besides, at that very moment 
Lucy was probably in his arms, all alight with joyful 
surprise, and if he could make Lucy so happy there 
must be enough of good in him to enable him to fulfil 
the very mild requirements of Lucy’s aunt. Just bare 
pleasantness, bare decency would be enough. She 
stoutly assured herself of her certainty of being fond 
of Everard if only he would let her. Sufficiently fond 
of him, that is; she didn’t suppose any affection she 
was going to feel for him would ever be likely to get the 
better of her reason, 

Immediately on Wemyss’s arrival the silent house 
had burst into feverish life. Doors banged, feet ran; 
and now Lizzie came hurrying along the passage and 
knocked at the door and told her breathlessly that 
dinner would be later—not for at least another half 
hour, because Mr. Wemyss had come unexpectedly, 
and cook had to 

She didn’t finish the sentence, she was in such a 
hurry to be off. 

Miss Entwhistle, her simple preparations being com- 
plete, had nothing left to do but sit in one of those 
wickerwork chairs with thin, hard, cretonne-covered 





VERA 295 


upholstery, which are sometimes found in inhospitable 
spare-rooms, and wait. 

She found this bad for her morale. There wasn’t 
a book in the room, or she would have distracted her 
thoughts by reading. She didn’t want dinner. She 
would have best liked to get into the bed she hadn’t 
yet slept once in, and stay there till it was time to go 
home, but her pride blushed scarlet at such a cowardly 
desire. She arranged herself, therefore, in the chair, 
and, since she couldn’t read, tried to remember some- 
thing to say over to herself instead,—some poem, or 
verse of a poem, to take her attention off the coming 
dinner; and she was shocked to find, as she sat there 
with her eyes shut to keep out the light that glared 
on her from the middle of the ceiling, that she could 
remember nothing but fragments: loose bits floating 
derelict round her mind, broken spars that didn’t even 
belong, she was afraid, to any really magnificent whole. 
How Jim would have scolded her,—Jim who forgot 
nothing that was beautiful. 


By nature cool, in pious habits bred, 
She looked on husbands with a virgins’ dread.... 


Now where did that come from? And why should it 
come at all? 


Such was the tone and manners of them all 
No married lady at the house would call. ... 


And that, for instance? She couldn’t remember ever 
having read any poem that could contain these lines, 


296 VERA 


yet she must have; she certainly hadn’t invented them. 
And this;—an absurd German thing Jim used to 
quote and laugh at: 


Der Sultan winkt, Zuleika schweigt, 
Und zeigt sich ganzlich abgeneight... . 


Why should a thing like that rise now to the surface 
of her mind and float round on it, while all the noble 
verse she had read and enjoyed, which would have been 
of such use and support to her at this juncture, was 
nowhere to be found, not a shred of it, in any corner 
of her brain? 

What a brain, thought Miss Entwhistle, disgusted, 
sitting up very straight in the wickerwork chair, her 
hands folded in her lap, her eyes shut; what a con- 
temptible anemic brain, deserting her like this, only 
able to throw up to the surface when stirred, out of 
all the store of splendid stuff put so assiduously into 
it during years and years of life, couplets. 

A sound she hadn’t yet heard began to crawl round 
the house, and, even while she wondered what it was, 
increased and increased till it seemed to her at last as 


if it must fill the universe and reach to Eaton Terrace. © 


It was that gong. Become active. Heavens, and 
what activity. She listened amazed. The time it went 
on! It went on and on, beating in her ears like the 
crack of doom. 

When the three great final strokes were succeeded 
by silence, she got up from her chair. The moment had 


VERA 297 


come, A last couplet floated through her brain,—her 
brain seemed to clutch at it: 


Betwixt the stirrup and the ground 
She mercy sought, she mercy found.... 


Now where did that come from? she asked herself 
distractedly, nervously passing one hand over her 
already perfectly tidy hair and opening the door with 
the other. 

There was Wemyss, opening Lucy’s door at the same 
moment. 

“Oh how do you do, Everard,” said Miss Entwhistle, 
advancing with all the precipitate and affectionate 
politeness of one who is greeting not only a host but a 
nephew. 

“Quite well thank you,” was Everard’s slightly 
unexpected reply; but logical, perfectly logical. 

She held out her hand and he shook it, and then 
proceeded past her to her bedroom door, which she 
had left open, and switched off the light, which she 
had left on. 

“Oh I’m sorry,” said Miss Entwhistle. 

“That,” she thought, “is one to Everard.” 

She waited for his return, and then walked, followed 
by him in silence, down the stairs. 

“How do you find Lucy?” she asked when they had 
got to the bottom. She didn’t like Everard’s silences ; 
she remembered several of them during that difference 
of opinion he and she had had about where Christmas 
should be spent. They weighed on her; and she had 


298 VERA 


the sensation of wriggling beneath them like an earwig 
beneath a stone, and it humiliated her to wriggle. 

“Just as I expected,” he said. ‘Perfectly well.” 

“Oh no—not perfectly well,’ exclaimed Miss Ent- 
whistle, a vision of the blue-wrapped little figure sitting 
weakly up against the pillows that afternoon before 
her eyes, “She is better to-day, but not nearly well.” 

‘‘You asked me what I thought, and I’ve told you,” 
said Wemyss. | 

No, it wouldn’t be an impulsive affection, hers and 
Everard’s, she felt; it would, when it did come, be the 
result of slow and careful preparation,—line upon line, 
here a little and there a little. 

*“Won’t you go in?” he asked; and she perceived he 
had pushed the dining-room door open and was holding 
it back with his arm while she, thinking this, lingered. 

“That,” she thought, “is another to Everard,”—her 
second bungle; first the light left on in her room, now 
keeping him waiting. 

She hurried through the door, and then, vexed with 
herself for hurrying, walked to her chair with almost 
an excess of deliberation. 

“The doctor ” she began, when they were in their 
places and Chesterton was hovering in readiness to 
snatch the cover off the soup the instant Wemyss had 
finished arranging his table-napkin. 

“I wish to hear nothing about the doctor,” he in- 
terrupted. 

Miss Entwhistle gave herself pains to be undaunted, 





VERA 299 


and said with almost an excess of naturalness, “But 
I'd like to tell you.” 

“It is no concern of mine,” he said. 

“But you’re her husband, you know,” said Miss 
Entwhistle, trying to sound pleasant. 

“I gave no orders,” said Wemyss. 

“But he had to be sent for. The child e 

“So you say. So you said on the telephone. And 
I told you then you were taking a great deal on your- 
self, unasked.” 

Miss Entwhistle hadn’t supposed that any one ever 
talked like this before servants. She now knew that 
she had been mistaken. 

“He’s your doctor,” said Wemyss. 

“My doctor?’’ 

“YT regard him entirely as your doctor.” 

“TY wish, Everard,’ said Miss Entwhistle politely, 
after a pause, “that I understood.” 

“You sent for him on your own responsibility, un- 
asked. You must take the consequences.” 

“T don’t know what you mean by the consequences,” 
said Miss Entwhistle, who was getting further and 
further away from that beginning of affection for 
Everard to which she had braced herself. 

“The bill,” said Wemyss. 

“Oh,’? said Miss Entwhistle. 

She was so much surprised that she could only 
ejaculate just that. Then the idea that she was in the 
act of being nourished by Wemyss’s soup seemed to her 
so disagreeable that she put down her spoon. 





300 VERA 


“Certainly if you wish it,” she said. 

“IT do,’ said Wemyss. 

The conversation flagged. 

Presently, sitting up very straight, refusing to take 
any notice of the variety and speed of the thoughts 
rushing round inside her and determined to behave as 
if she weren’t minding anything, she said in a very clear 
little voice which she strove to make sound pleasant, 
“Did you have a good journey down?” 

“No,” said Wemyss, waving the soup away. 

This as an answer, though no doubt strictly truthful, 
was too bald for much to be done with it. Miss Ent- 
whistle therefore merely echoed, as she herself felt 
foolishly, “No?” 

And Wemyss confirmed his first reply by once more 
saying, “No.” 

The conversation flagged. 

“T suppose,” she then said, making another effort, 
“the train was very full.” 

As this was not a question he was silent, and allowed 


- 


her to suppose. 

The conversation flagged. 

“Why is there no fish?” he asked Chesterton, who 
was offering him cutlets. 

‘There was no time to get any, sir,’ said Chesterton. 

“He might have known that,” thought Miss Ent- 
whistle. 

“You will tell the cook that I consider I have not 
dined unless there is fish.” 

“Yes sir,’? said Chesterton. 


VERA 301 


“Goose,” thought Miss Entwhistle. 

It was easier, and far less nerve-racking, to regard 
him indulgently as a goose than to let oneself get angry. 
He was like a great cross schoolboy, she thought, sit- 
ting there being rude; but unfortunately a schoolboy 
with power. 

He ate the cutlets in silence. ‘Miss Entwhistle 
declined them. She had missed her chance, she thought, 
when the cab was beneath her window and all she had 
to do was to lean out and say, “Wait a minute.” But 
then Lucy,—ah yes, Lucy. The minute she thought 
of Lucy she felt she absolutely must be friends with 
Everard. Incredible as it seemed to her, and always 
had seemed from the first, that Lucy should love him, 
there it was,—she did. It couldn’t be possible to love 
him without any reason. Of course not. The child 
knew. The child was wise and tender. Therefore 
Miss Entwhistle made another attempt at resuscitating 
conversation. 

Watching her opportunity when Chesterton’s back 
was receding down the room towards the outstretched 
arm at the end, for she didn’t mind what Wemyss said 
quite so acutely if Chesterton wasn’t looking, she said 
with as natural a voice as she could manage, ‘‘I’m very 
glad you’ve come, you know. I’m sure Lucy has been 
missing you very much.” 

“Lucy can speak for herself,’’ he said. 

Then Miss Entwhistle concluded that conversation 
with Everard was too difficult. Let it flag. She 
couldn’t, whatever he might feel able to do, say any- 


302 VERA 


thing that wasn’t polite in the presence of Chesterton. 
She doubted whether, even if Chesterton were not there, 
she would be able to; and yet continued politeness 
appeared in the face of his answers impossible. She 
had best be silent, she decided; though to withdraw 
into silence was of itself a humiliating defeat. 

When she was little Miss Entwhistle used to be rude. 
Between the ages of five and ten she frequently made 
faces at people. But not since then. Ten was the 
latest. After that good manners descended upon her, 
and had enveloped her ever since. Nor had any oc- 
casion arisen later in her life in which she had even 
been tempted to slough them. Urbane herself, she 
dwelt among urbanities; kindly, she everywhere met 
kindliness. But she did feel now that it might, if only 
she could so far forget herself, afford her solace were 
she able to say, straight at him, “Wemyss.” 

Just that word. No more. For some reason she 
was dying to call him Wemyss without any Mr. She 
was sure that if she might only say that one word, 
straight at him, she would feel better; as much relieved 
as she did when she was little and made faces. 

Dreadful; dreadful. She cast down her eyes, over- 
whelmed by the nature of her thoughts, and said No 
thank you to the pudding. 

“It is clear,’ thought Wemyss, observing her silence 
and her refusal to eat, “where Lucy gets her sulking 
from.” 

No more words were spoken till, dinner being over, 
he gave the order for coffee in the library. 


VERA 303 


“T’ll go and say good-night to Lucy,” said Miss 
Entwhistle as they got up. 

“You'll be so good as to do nothing of the sort,” 
said Wemyss. 

“T—beg your pardon?” inquired Miss Entwhistle, 
not quite sure she could have heard right. 

At this point they were both just in front of Vera’s 
portrait on their way to the door, and she was looking 
at each of them, impartially strangling her smile. 

“T wish to speak to you in the library,” said Wemyss. 

“But suppose I don’t wish to be spoken to in the 
library?” leapt to the tip of Miss Entwhistle’s tongue. 

There, however, was Chesterton,—checking, calming. 

So she said, instead, “Do.” ‘| 


XXXT 


the dining-room, the hall, the staircase, Lucy’s 

bedroom, the spare-room, the antlers, and the 
gong’; but she didn’t know the library. She had hoped 
to go away without knowing it. However, she was not 
to be permitted to. 

The newly-lit wood fire blazed cheerfully when they 
went in, but its amiable light was immediately quenched 
by the electric light Wemyss switched on at the door. 
From the middle of the ceiling it poured down so 
strongly that Miss Entwhistle wished she had brought 
her sunshade. The blinds were drawn, and there in 
front of the window was the table where Everard had 
sat writing—she remembered every word of Lucy’s 
account of it—on that July afternoon of Vera’s death. 
It was now April; still well over three months to the 
first anniversary of that dreadful day, and here he was | 
married again, and to, of all people in the world, her 
Lucy. There were so many strong, robust-minded 
young women in the world, so many hardened widows, 
so many thick-skinned persons of mature years wanting 
a comfortable home, who wouldn’t mind Everard be- 
cause they wouldn’t love him and therefore wouldn’t 
feel,—why should Fate have ordered that it should just 

304 


Si: hadn’t been into the library yet. She knew 


VERA 305 


be her Lucy? No, she didn’t like him, she couldn’t like 
him. He might be, and she hoped he was, all Lucy said, 
wonderful and wholesome and natural and all the 
rest of it, but if he didn’t seem so to her what, as far 
as she was concerned, was the good of it? 

The fact is that by the time Miss Entwhistle got into 
the library she was very angry. Even the politest 
worm, she said to herself, the most conciliatory, sensible 
worm, fully conscious that wisdom points to patience, 
will nevertheless turn on its niece’s husband if trodden 
on too heavily. The way Wemyss had ordered her 
not to go up to Lucy. . . . Particularly enraging to 
Miss Entwhistle was the knowledge of her weak posi- 
tion, uninvited in his house. 

Wemyss, standing on the hearthrug in front of the 
blaze, filled his pipe. How well she knew that attitude 
and that action. How often she had seen both in 
her drawing-room in London. And hadn’t she been 
kind to him? Hadn’t she always, when she was hostess 
and he was guest, been hospitable and courteous? No, 
she didn’t like him. 

She sat down in one of the immense chairs, and had 
the disagreeable sensation that she was sitting down 
when Wemyss hollowed out. The two little red spots 
were brightly on her cheek-bones,—had been there, in- 
deed, ever since the beginning of dinner. 

Wemyss filled his pipe with his customary delibera- 
tion, saying nothing. “I believe he’s enjoying himself,” 
flashed into her mind. “Enjoying being in a temper, 
and having me to bully.” 


306 VERA 


“Well?” she asked, suddenly unbearably irritated. 

“Oh it’s no good taking that tone with me,” he said, 
continuing carefully to fill his pipe. 

“Really, Everard,” she said, ashamed of him, but also 
ashamed of herself. She oughtn’t to have let go her 
grip on herself and said, ‘‘Well?’? with such obvious 
irritation. 

The coffee came. 

“No thank you,” said Miss Entwhistle. 

He helped himself. 

The coffee went. 

“Perhaps,” said Miss Entwhistle in a very polite 
voice when the door had been shut by Chesterton, 
“you'll tell me what it is you wish to say.” 

“Certainly. One thing is that I’ve ordered the cab 
to come round for you to-morrow in time for the early 
train.” 

“Oh thank you, Everard. That is most thoughtful,” 
said Miss Entwhistle. “I had already told Lucy, when 
she said you would be down to-morrow, that I would 
go home early.” 

“That’s one thing,” said Wemyss, taking no notice 
of this and going on carefully filling his pipe. ‘The 
other is, that I don’t wish you to see Lucy again, either 
to-night or before you go.” 

She looked at him in astonishment. “But why 
not?” she asked. 

“I’m not going to have her upset.” 

“But my dear Everard, don’t you see it will upset 
her much more if I don’t say good-bye to her? It 


VERA 307 


won't upset her at all if I do, because she knows I’m 
going to-morrow anyhow. Why, what will the child 
think P” 

“Oblige me by allowing me to be the best judge of 
my own affairs.” 

“Do you know I very much doubt if you’re that,” 
said Miss Entwhistle earnestly, really moved by his 
inability to perceive consequences. Here he had got 
everything, everything to make him happy for the rest 
of his life,—the wife he loved adoring him, believing in 
him, blotting out by her mere marrying him every 
doubt as to the exact manner of Vera’s death, and all 
he had to do was to be kind and ordinarily decent. 
And poor Everard—it was absurd of her to mind for 
him, but she did in fact at that moment mind for him, 
he seemed such a pathetic human being, blindly bent 
on ruining his own happiness—would spoil it all, in- 
evitably smash it all sooner or later, if he wasn’t able 
to see, wasn’t able to understand. .. . 

Wemyss considered her remark so impertinent that 
he felt he would have been amply justified in requesting 
her to leave his house then and there, dark or no dark, 
train or no train. And so he would have done, if he 
hadn’t. happened to prefer a long rather than a short 
scene. 

“J didn’t ask you into my library to hear your 
opinion of my character,” he said, lighting his pipe. 

‘Well then,”’ said Miss Entwhistle, for there was too 
much at stake for her to allow herself either to be 


308 VERA 


silenced or goaded, “‘let me tell you a few things about 
Lucy’s.” 

“About Lucy’s?” echoed Wemyss, amazed at such 
effrontery. ‘About my wife’s?” 

“Yes,” said Miss Entwhistle, very earnestly. ‘It’s 
the sort of character that takes things to heart, and 
she’ll be miserable—miserable, Everard, and worry and 
worry if I just disappear as you wish me to without a 
word. Of course Ill go, and I promise I'll never come 
again unless you ask me to. But don’t, because you’re 
angry, insist on something that will make Lucy extraor- 
dinarily unhappy. Let me say good-night to her 
now, and good-bye to-morrow morning. I tell you she’ll 
be terribly worried if I don’t. She'll think”—Miss 
Entwhistle tried to smile—“‘that you’ve turned me out. 
And then, you see, if she thinks that, she won’t be 
able *? Miss Entwhistle hesitated. “Well, she 
won’t be able to be proud of you. And that, my dear 
Everard”—she looked at him with a faint smile of 
deprecation and apology that she, a spinster, should 
talk of this—“gives love its deepest wound.” 





Wemyss stared at her, too much amazed to speak. 
In his house . . . In his own house! 

“I’m sorry,” she said, still more earnestly, “af this 
annoys you, but I do want—I really do think it is very 
important.” 

There was then a silence during which they looked 
at each other, he at her in amazement, she at him trying 
to hope,—hope that he would take what she had said 
in good part. It was so vital that he should under- 


VERA 309 


stand, that he should get an idea of the effect on Lucy 
of just that sort of unkind, even cruel behaviour. His 
own happiness was involved as well. Tragic, tragic for 
every one if he couldn’t be got to see... . 

“Are you aware,” he said, “that this is my house?” 

“Oh Everard ” she said at that, with a move- 
ment of despair. 

“Are you aware,” he continued, “that you are talk- 
ing to a husband of his wife?” 

Miss Entwhistle said nothing, but leaning her head 
on her hand looked at the fire. 

“Are you aware that you thrust yourself into my 
house uninvited directly my back was turned, and have 
been living in it, and would have gone on indefinitely 
living in it, without any sanction from me unless I had 
come down, as I did come down, on purpose to put an 
end to such an outrageous state of affairs?’ 

“Of course,” she said, “that is one way of describ- 
ing it.” 

“Tt is the way of every reasonable and decent per- 
99 





son,” said Wemyss. 

“Oh no,” said Miss Entwhistle. “That is precisely 
what it isn’t, But,” she added, getting up from the 
chair and holding out her hand, “‘it is your way, and 
so I think, Everard, I’ll say good-night. And good- 
bye too, for I don’t expect I’ll see you in the morning.” 

“One would suppose,” he said, taking no notice of 
her proffered hand, for he hadn’t nearly done, “from 
your tone that this was your house and I was your 
servant.” 


310 VERA 


“Y assure you I could never imagine it to be my 
house or you my servant.” 

‘‘You made a great mistake, I can tell you, when you 
started interfering between husband and wife. You 
have only yourself to thank if I don’t allow you to 
continue to see Lucy.” 

She stared at him. 

“Do you mean,” she said, after a silence, “that you 
intend to prevent my seeing her later on too? In 
London ?”’ 

“That, exactly, is my intention.” 

Miss Entwhistle stared at him, lost in thought; but 
he could see he had got her this time, for her face had 
gone visibly pale. 

“In that case, Everard,” she said, presently, “I think 
it my duty i 

“Don’t begin about duties. You have no duties in 
regard to me and my household.” 

*“T think it my duty to tell you that from my knowl- 
edge of Lucy i 

“Your knowledge of Lucy! What is it compared to 
mine, I should like to know?” 

“Please listen to me. It’s most important. From 
my knowledge of her,’ I’m quite sure she hasn’t the 
staying power of Vera.” 

It was now his turn to stare. She was facing him, 
very pale, with shining, intrepid eyes. He had got her 
in her vulnerable spot he could see, or she wouldn’t be 
so white, but she was going to do her utmost to annoy 
him up to the last. 








VERA 311 





“The staying power of ?? he repeated, 
“I’m sure of it. And you must be wise, you must 


positively have the wisdom to take care of your own 
% 





happiness 

“Oh good God, you preaching woman!” he burst 
out. “How dare you stand there in my own house 
talking to me of Vera?” | 

“Hush,” said Miss Entwhistle, her eyes shining 
brighter and brighter in her white face. “Listen to me. 
It’s atrocious that I should have to, but nobody ever 
seems to have told you a single thing in your life. You 
don’t seem to know anything at all about women, 
anything at all about human beings. How could you 
bring a girl like Lucy—any young wife—to this house? 
But here she is, and it still may be all right because she 
loves you so, if you take care, if you are tender and 
kind. I assure you it is nothing to me how angry you 
are with me, or how completely you separate me from 
Lucy, if only you are kind to her. Don’t you realise, 
Everard, that she may soon begin to have a baby, and 
that then she 


“You indelicate woman! You incredibly indecent, 
a2 








improper 
“YT don’t in the least mind what you say to me, but 
I tell you that unless you take care, unless you’re 
kinder than you’re being at this moment, it won’t be 
anything like fifteen years this time.” 
He repeated, staring, “Fifteen years this time?” 
“Yes. Good-bye.” 


312 | VERA 
And she was gone, and had shut the door behind 


her before her monstrous meaning dawned on him, 

Then, when it did, he strode out of the room after 
her. 

She was going up the stairs very slowly. 

“Come down,’ he said. 

She went on as if she hadn’t heard him. 

“Come down. If you don’t come down at once I'll 
fetch you.” 

This, through all her wretchedness, through all her 
horror, for beating in her ears were two words over and 
over again, Lucy, Vera—Lucy, Vera—struck her as so 
absurd, the vision of herself, more naturally nimble, 
going on up the stairs just out of Wemyss’s reach, with 
him heavily pursuing her, till among the attics at the 
top he couldn’t but run her to earth in a cistern, that 
she had great difficulty in not spilling over into a 
ridiculous, hysterical laugh. 

“Very well then,”’ she said, stopping and speaking in 
a low voice so that Lucy shouldn’t be disturbed by 
unusual sounds, “‘I’ll come down.” And shining, quiv- 
ering with indomitableness, she did. 

She arrived at the bottom of the stairs where he was 
standing and faced him. What was he going to do? 
Take her by the shoulders and turn her out? Not a 
sign, not the smallest sign of distress or fear should he 
get out of her. Fear of him in relation to herself was 
the last thing she would condescend to feel, but fear for 
Lucy—for Lucy. . .. She could very easily have cried 
out because of Lucy, entreated to be allowed to see her 


VERA 313 


sometimes, humbled herself, if she hadn’t gripped hold 
of the conviction of his delight if she broke down, of 
his delight at having broken her down, at refusing. 
The thought froze her serene. 

“You will now leave my house,’’ said Wemyss through 
his teeth. 

“Without my hat, Everard?” she inquired mildly. 

He didn’t answer. He would gladly at that moment 
have killed her, for he thought he saw she was laughing 
at him. Not openly. Her face was serious and her 
voice polite; but he thought he saw she was laughing 
at him, and beyond anything that could happen to him 
he hated being defied. | 

He walked to the front door, reached up and undid 
the top bolt, stooped down and undid the bottom bolt, 
turned the key, took the chain off, pulled the door open, 
and said, “There now. Go. And let this be a lesson 
to you.” 

“TI am glad to see,” said Miss Entwhistle, going out 
on to the steps with dignity, and surveying the stars 
with detachment, “that it is a fine night.” 

He shut and bolted and locked and chained her out, 
and as soon as he had done, and she heard his footsteps 
going away, and her eyes were a little accustomed to 
the darkness, she went round to the back entrance, 
rang the bell, and asked the astonished tweeny, who 
presently appeared, to send Lizzie to her; and when 
Lizzie came, also astonished, she asked her to be so 
kind as to go up to her room and put her things in her 
bag and bring her her hat and cloak and purse. 


314 VERA 


“Y’ll wait here in the garden,” said Miss Entwhistle, 
“and it would be most kind, Lizzie, if you were rather 
quick.” | 

Then, when she had got her belongings, and Lizzie 
had put her cloak round her shoulders and tried to 
express, by smoothings and brushings of it, her under- 
standing and sympathy, for it was clear to Lizzie and 
to all the servants that Miss Entwhistle was being 
turned out,-she went away; she went away past the 
silent house, through the white gate, up through the 
darkness of the sunken oozy lane, out on to the road 
where the stars gave light, across the bridge, into the 
village, along the road to the station, to wait for what- 
ever train should come. 

She walked slower and slower. 

She was extraordinarily tired, 


XXXIT 


EMYSS went back into the lbrary, and 

\ : seeing his coffee still on the chimney-piece he 

drank it, and then sat down in the chair 
Miss Entwhistle had just left, and smoked. 

He wouldn’t go up to Lucy yet; not till he was sure 
the woman wasn’t going to try any tricks of knocking 
at the front door or ringing bells. He actually, so in- 
accurate was his perception of Miss Entwhistle’s char- 
acter and methods, he actually thought she might 
perhaps throw stones at the windows, and he decided 
to remain downstairs guarding his premises till this 
possibility became, with the lapse of time, more remote. 

Meanwhile the fury of his indignation at the things 
she had said was immensely tempered by the real satis- 
faction he felt in having turned her out. That was the 
way to show people who was master, and meant to be 
master, in his own house. She had supposed she could 
do as she liked with him, use his house, be waited on by 
his servants, waste his electric light, interfere between 
him and his wife, say what she chose, lecture him, stand 
there and insult him, and he had showed her very 
quickly and clearly that she couldn’t. As to her final 
monstrous suggestion, it merely proved how completely 
he had got her, how accurately he had hit on the pun- 

315 


316 VERA 


ishment she felt most, that she should have indulged 
in such ravings. The ravings of impotence,—that’s 
what that was. For the rest of his life, he supposed, 
whenever people couldn’t get their own way with him, 
were baffled by his steadfastness and consequently be- 
came vindictive, they would throw that old story up 
against him. Let them. It wouldn’t make him budge, 
not a hair’s breadth, in any direction he didn’t choose. 
Master in his own house,—that’s what he was. 

Curious how women invariably started by thinking 
they could do as they liked with him, Vera had thought 
so, and behaved accordingly; and she had been quite 
surprised, and even injured, when she discovered she 
couldn’t. No doubt this woman was feeling consider- 
ably surprised too now; no doubt she never dreamt 
he would turn her out. Women never believed he would 
do the simple, obvious thing. And even when he warned 
them that he would, as he could remember on several 
occasions having warned Vera—indeed, it was recorded 
in his diary—they still didn’t believe it. Daunted 
themselves by convention and the fear of what people 
might think, they imagined that he would be daunted 
too. Then, when he wasn’t, and it happened, they were 
surprised; and they never seemed to see that they had 
only themselves to thank. 

He sat smoking and thinking a long time, one ear 
attentive to any sounds which might indicate that Miss 
Entwhistle was approaching hostilely from outside. 
Chesterton found him sitting lke that when she came 
in to remove the coffee cup, and she found him still 


VERA 317 


sitting like that when she came in an hour later with 
his whisky. 

It was nearly eleven before he decided that the danger 
of attack was probably over; but still, before he went 
upstairs, he thought it prudent to open the window and 
step over the sill on to the terrace and just look round. 

All was as quiet as the grave. It was so quiet that 
he could hear a little ripple where the water was split 
by a dead branch as the river slid gently along. There 
were stars, so that it was not quite dark; and although 
the April air was moist it was dry under foot. A 
pleasant night for a walk. Well, he would not grudge 
her that. 

He went along the terrace, and round the clump of 
laurustinus bushes which cloaked the servants’ entrance, 
to the front of the house. 

Empty. Nobody still lingering on the steps. 

He then proceeded as far as the white gate, holding 
her capable of having left it open on purpose,—‘In 
order to aggravate me,” as he put it to himself. 

It was shut. 

He stood leaning on it a minute listening, in case she 
should be lurking in the lane. 

Not a sound. 

Satisfied that she had really gone, he returned to the 
terrace and re-entered the library, fastening the window 
carefully and pulling down the blind. 

What a relief, what an extraordinary relief, to have 
got rid of her; and not just for this once, but for good. 
Also she was Lucy’s only relation, so there were no 


318 VERA 


more of them to come and try to interfere between man 
and wife. He was very glad she had behaved so out- 
rageously at the end saying that about Vera, for it 
justified him completely in what he had done. A little 
less bad behaviour, and she would have had to be allowed 
to stay the night; still a little less, and she would have 
had to come to The Willows again, let alone having a 
free hand in London to influence Lucy when he was at 
his club playing bridge and unable to look after her. 
Yes; it was very satisfactory, and well worth coming 
down a day earlier for. 

He wound up his watch, standing before the last 
glimmerings of the fire, and felt quite good-humoured 
again. More than good-humoured,—refreshed and ex- 
hilarated, as though he had had a cold bath and a 
thorough rub down. Now for bed and his little Love. 
What simple things a man wanted,—only his woman 
and peace, 

Wemyss finished winding his watch, stretched him- 
self, yawned, and then went slowly upstairs, switching 
off the lights as he went. 

In the bedroom there was a night-light burning, and 
Lucy had fallen asleep, tired of waiting for Aunt Dot 
to come and say good-night, but she woke when he 
came in. 

“Ys that you, Aunt Dot?” she murmured, even 
through her sleepiness sure it must be, for Everard 
would have turned on the light. 

Wemyss, however, didn’t want her to wake up and 


VERA 319 


begin asking questions, so he refrained from turning 
on the light. 

“No, it’s your Everard,” he said, moving about on 
tip-toe. “Sh-sh, now. Go to sleep again like a good 
little girl.” 

Through her sleepiness she knew that voice of his, 
it meant one of his pleased moods. How sweet of him 
to be taking such care not to disturb her . . . dear 
Everard . . . he and Aunt Dot must have made friends 
then . . . how glad she was . . . wonderful little Aunt 
Dot . . . before dinner he was angry, and she had 
been so afraid ... afraid... what a relief... 
how glad. ... 

But Lucy was asleep again, and the next thing she 
knew was Everard’s arm being slid under her shoulders 
and she being drawn across the bed and gathered to 
his breast. 

““Who’s my very own baby?” she heard him saying; 
and she woke up just enough sleepily to return his kiss. 


THE END 





THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, 
GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 





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